Sixes and Sevens

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SIXES AND SEVENS

by

O. HENRY







CONTENTS

I. THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS
II. THE SLEUTHS
III. WITCHES' LOAVES
IV. THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES
V. HOLDING UP A TRAIN
VI. ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN
VII. THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER
VIII. MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
IX. AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS
X. A GHOST OF A CHANCE
XI. JIMMY HAYES AND MURIEL
XII. THE DOOR OF UNREST
XIII. THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES
XIV. LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE
XV. OCTOBER AND JUNE
XVI. THE CHURCH WITH AN OVERSHOT-WHEEL
XVII. NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT
XVIII. THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES
XIX. THE LADY HIGHER UP
XX. THE GREATER CONEY
XXI. LAW AND ORDER
XXII. TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY
XXIII. THE CALIPH AND THE CAD
XXIV. THE DIAMOND OF KALI
XXV. THE DAY WE CELEBRATE




I

THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS


Inexorably Sam Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from the
Rancho Altito at the end of a three-months' visit. It is not to be
expected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscuits
yellow-streaked with saleratus for longer than that. Nick Napoleon,
the big Negro man cook, had never been able to make good biscuits.
Once before, when Nick was cooking at the Willow Ranch, Sam had been
forced to fly from his _cuisine_, after only a six-weeks' sojourn.

On Sam's face was an expression of sorrow, deepened with regret and
slightly tempered by the patient forgiveness of a connoisseur who
cannot be understood. But very firmly and inexorably he buckled his
saddle-cinches, looped his stake-rope and hung it to his saddle-horn,
tied his slicker and coat on the cantle, and looped his quirt on his
right wrist. The Merrydews (householders of the Rancho Altito), men,
women, children, and servants, vassals, visitors, employes, dogs, and
casual callers were grouped in the "gallery" of the ranch house, all
with faces set to the tune of melancholy and grief. For, as the coming
of Sam Galloway to any ranch, camp, or cabin between the rivers Frio
or Bravo del Norte aroused joy, so his departure caused mourning and
distress.

And then, during absolute silence, except for the bumping of a hind
elbow of a hound dog as he pursued a wicked flea, Sam tenderly and
carefully tied his guitar across his saddle on top of his slicker and
coat. The guitar was in a green duck bag; and if you catch the
significance of it, it explains Sam.

Sam Galloway was the Last of the Troubadours. Of course you know about
the troubadours. The encyclopaedia says they flourished between the
eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. What they flourished doesn't
seem clear--you may be pretty sure it wasn't a sword: maybe it was a
fiddlebow, or a forkful of spaghetti, or a lady's scarf. Anyhow, Sam
Galloway was one of 'em.

Sam put on a martyred expression as he mounted his pony. But the
expression on his face was hilarious compared with the one on his
pony's. You see, a pony gets to know his rider mighty well, and it is
not unlikely that cow ponies in pastures and at hitching racks had
often guyed Sam's pony for being ridden by a guitar player instead of
by a rollicking, cussing, all-wool cowboy. No man is a hero to his
saddle-horse. And even an escalator in a department store might be
excused for tripping up a troubadour.

Oh, I know I'm one; and so are you. You remember the stories you
memorize and the card tricks you study and that little piece on the
piano--how does it go?--ti-tum-te-tum-ti-tum--those little Arabian Ten
Minute Entertainments that you furnish when you go up to call on your
rich Aunt Jane. You should know that _omnae personae in tres partes
divisae sunt_. Namely: Barons, Troubadours, and Workers. Barons have no
inclination to read such folderol as this; and Workers have no time:
so I know you must be a Troubadour, and that you will understand Sam
Galloway. Whether we sing, act, dance, write, lecture, or paint, we
are only troubadours; so let us make the worst of it.

The pony with the Dante Alighieri face, guided by the pressure of
Sam's knees, bore that wandering minstrel sixteen miles southeastward.
Nature was in her most benignant mood. League after league of
delicate, sweet flowerets made fragrant the gently undulating
prairie. The east wind tempered the spring warmth; wool-white clouds
flying in from the Mexican Gulf hindered the direct rays of the April
sun. Sam sang songs as he rode. Under his pony's bridle he had tucked
some sprigs of chaparral to keep away the deer flies. Thus crowned,
the long-faced quadruped looked more Dantesque than before, and,
judging by his countenance, seemed to think of Beatrice.

Straight as topography permitted, Sam rode to the sheep ranch of old
man Ellison. A visit to a sheep ranch seemed to him desirable just
then. There had been too many people, too much noise, argument,
competition, confusion, at Rancho Altito. He had never conferred upon
old man Ellison the favour of sojourning at his ranch; but he knew he
would be welcome. The troubadour is his own passport everywhere. The
Workers in the castle let down the drawbridge to him, and the Baron
sets him at his left hand at table in the banquet hall. There ladies
smile upon him and applaud his songs and stories, while the Workers
bring boars' heads and flagons. If the Baron nods once or twice in his
carved oaken chair, he does not do it maliciously.

Old man Ellison welcomed the troubadour flatteringly. He had often
heard praises of Sam Galloway from other ranchmen who had been
complimented by his visits, but had never aspired to such an honour
for his own humble barony. I say barony because old man Ellison
was the Last of the Barons. Of course, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton lived too
early to know him, or he wouldn't have conferred that sobriquet
upon Warwick. In life it is the duty and the function of the Baron
to provide work for the Workers and lodging and shelter for the
Troubadours.

Old man Ellison was a shrunken old man, with a short, yellow-white
beard and a face lined and seamed by past-and-gone smiles. His ranch
was a little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the
lonesomest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a
Kiowa Indian man cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed
coyote chained to a fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran
on two sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither
leased nor owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his
language would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with
him. Those were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what
illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have
been written the day on which a troubadour--a troubadour who,
according to the encyclopaedia, should have flourished between the
eleventh and the thirteenth centuries--drew rein at the gates of his
baronial castle!

Old man Ellison's smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he
saw Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to
greet him.

"Hello, Mr. Ellison," called Sam cheerfully. "Thought I'd drop over
and see you a while. Notice you've had fine rains on your range. They
ought to make good grazing for your spring lambs."

"Well, well, well," said old man Ellison. "I'm mighty glad to see
you, Sam. I never thought you'd take the trouble to ride over to
as out-of-the-way an old ranch as this. But you're mighty welcome.
'Light. I've got a sack of new oats in the kitchen--shall I bring out
a feed for your hoss?"

"Oats for him?" said Sam, derisively. "No, sir-ee. He's as fat as a
pig now on grass. He don't get rode enough to keep him in condition.
I'll just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you
don't mind."

I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries
did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously as their
parallels did that evening at old man Ellison's sheep ranch. The
Kiowa's biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong.
Ineradicable hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison's
weather-tanned face. As for the troubadour, he said to himself that
he had stumbled upon pleasant places indeed. A well-cooked, abundant
meal, a host whom his lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight
far beyond the merits of the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere
that his sensitive soul at that time craved united to confer upon him
a satisfaction and luxurious ease that he had seldom found on his
tours of the ranches.

After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took
out his guitar. Not by way of payment, mind you--neither Sam Galloway
nor any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the
late Tommy Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the
esteemed but often obscure Mother Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for his
supper. No true troubadour would do that. He would have his supper,
and then sing for Art's sake.

Sam Galloway's repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and
between thirty and forty songs. He by no means stopped there. He could
talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And
he never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could
sit. I am strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a
portrait as well as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will
allow.

I wish you could have seen him: he was small and tough and
inactive beyond the power of imagination to conceive. He wore an
ultramarine-blue woollen shirt laced down the front with a pearl-gray,
exaggerated sort of shoestring, indestructible brown duck clothes,
inevitable high-heeled boots with Mexican spurs, and a Mexican straw
sombrero.

That evening Sam and old man Ellison dragged their chairs out under
the hackberry trees. They lighted cigarettes; and the troubadour
gaily touched his guitar. Many of the songs he sang were the weird,
melancholy, minor-keyed _canciones_ that he had learned from the
Mexican sheep herders and _vaqueros_. One, in particular, charmed and
soothed the soul of the lonely baron. It was a favourite song of the
sheep herders, beginning: "_Huile, huile, palomita_," which being
translated means, "Fly, fly, little dove." Sam sang it for old man
Ellison many times that evening.

The troubadour stayed on at the old man's ranch. There was peace and
quiet and appreciation there, such as he had not found in the noisy
camps of the cattle kings. No audience in the world could have crowned
the work of poet, musician, or artist with more worshipful and
unflagging approval than that bestowed upon his efforts by old man
Ellison. No visit by a royal personage to a humble woodchopper or
peasant could have been received with more flattering thankfulness and
joy.

On a cool, canvas-covered cot in the shade of the hackberry trees Sam
Galloway passed the greater part of his time. There he rolled his
brown paper cigarettes, read such tedious literature as the ranch
afforded, and added to his repertoire of improvisations that he played
so expertly on his guitar. To him, as a slave ministering to a great
lord, the Kiowa brought cool water from the red jar hanging under the
brush shelter, and food when he called for it. The prairie zephyrs
fanned him mildly; mocking-birds at morn and eve competed with but
scarce equalled the sweet melodies of his lyre; a perfumed stillness
seemed to fill all his world. While old man Ellison was pottering
among his flocks of sheep on his mile-an-hour pony, and while the
Kiowa took his siesta in the burning sunshine at the end of the
kitchen, Sam would lie on his cot thinking what a happy world he lived
in, and how kind it is to the ones whose mission in life it is to give
entertainment and pleasure. Here he had food and lodging as good as
he had ever longed for; absolute immunity from care or exertion or
strife; an endless welcome, and a host whose delight at the sixteenth
repetition of a song or a story was as keen as at its initial giving.
Was there ever a troubadour of old who struck upon as royal a castle
in his wanderings? While he lay thus, meditating upon his blessings,
little brown cottontails would shyly frolic through the yard; a covey
of white-topknotted blue quail would run past, in single file, twenty
yards away; a _paisano_ bird, out hunting for tarantulas, would hop
upon the fence and salute him with sweeping flourishes of its long
tail. In the eighty-acre horse pasture the pony with the Dantesque
face grew fat and almost smiling. The troubadour was at the end of his
wanderings.

Old man Ellison was his own _vaciero_. That means that he supplied his
sheep camps with wood, water, and rations by his own labours instead
of hiring a _vaciero_. On small ranches it is often done.

One morning he started for the camp of Incarnacion Felipe de la Cruz y
Monte Piedras (one of his sheep herders) with the week's usual rations
of brown beans, coffee, meal, and sugar. Two miles away on the trail
from old Fort Ewing he met, face to face, a terrible being called King
James, mounted on a fiery, prancing, Kentucky-bred horse.

King James's real name was James King; but people reversed it because
it seemed to fit him better, and also because it seemed to please his
majesty. King James was the biggest cattleman between the Alamo plaza
in San Antone and Bill Hopper's saloon in Brownsville. Also he was the
loudest and most offensive bully and braggart and bad man in southwest
Texas. And he always made good whenever he bragged; and the more noise
he made the more dangerous he was. In the story papers it is always
the quiet, mild-mannered man with light blue eyes and a low voice who
turns out to be really dangerous; but in real life and in this story
such is not the case. Give me my choice between assaulting a large,
loudmouthed rough-houser and an inoffensive stranger with blue eyes
sitting quietly in a corner, and you will see something doing in the
corner every time.

King James, as I intended to say earlier, was a fierce,
two-hundred-pound, sunburned, blond man, as pink as an October
strawberry, and with two horizontal slits under shaggy red eyebrows
for eyes. On that day he wore a flannel shirt that was tan-coloured,
with the exception of certain large areas which were darkened by
transudations due to the summer sun. There seemed to be other clothing
and garnishings about him, such as brown duck trousers stuffed into
immense boots, and red handkerchiefs and revolvers; and a shotgun
laid across his saddle and a leather belt with millions of cartridges
shining in it--but your mind skidded off such accessories; what held
your gaze was just the two little horizontal slits that he used for
eyes.

This was the man that old man Ellison met on the trail; and when you
count up in the baron's favour that he was sixty-five and weighed
ninety-eight pounds and had heard of King James's record and that he
(the baron) had a hankering for the _vita simplex_ and had no gun with
him and wouldn't have used it if he had, you can't censure him if I
tell you that the smiles with which the troubadour had filled his
wrinkles went out of them and left them plain wrinkles again. But he
was not the kind of baron that flies from danger. He reined in the
mile-an-hour pony (no difficult feat), and saluted the formidable
monarch.

King James expressed himself with royal directness. "You're that old
snoozer that's running sheep on this range, ain't you?" said he. "What
right have you got to do it? Do you own any land, or lease any?"

"I have two sections leased from the state," said old man Ellison,
mildly.

"Not by no means you haven't," said King James. "Your lease expired
yesterday; and I had a man at the land office on the minute to take it
up. You don't control a foot of grass in Texas. You sheep men have got
to git. Your time's up. It's a cattle country, and there ain't any
room in it for snoozers. This range you've got your sheep on is mine.
I'm putting up a wire fence, forty by sixty miles; and if there's a
sheep inside of it when it's done it'll be a dead one. I'll give you a
week to move yours away. If they ain't gone by then, I'll send six men
over here with Winchesters to make mutton out of the whole lot. And if
I find you here at the same time this is what you'll get."

King James patted the breech of his shot-gun warningly.

Old man Ellison rode on to the camp of Incarnacion. He sighed many
times, and the wrinkles in his face grew deeper. Rumours that the
old order was about to change had reached him before. The end of
Free Grass was in sight. Other troubles, too, had been accumulating
upon his shoulders. His flocks were decreasing instead of growing;
the price of wool was declining at every clip; even Bradshaw, the
storekeeper at Frio City, at whose store he bought his ranch supplies,
was dunning him for his last six months' bill and threatening to cut
him off. And so this last greatest calamity suddenly dealt out to him
by the terrible King James was a crusher.

When the old man got back to the ranch at sunset he found Sam Galloway
lying on his cot, propped against a roll of blankets and wool sacks,
fingering his guitar.

"Hello, Uncle Ben," the troubadour called, cheerfully. "You rolled in
early this evening. I been trying a new twist on the Spanish Fandango
to-day. I just about got it. Here's how she goes--listen."

"That's fine, that's mighty fine," said old man Ellison, sitting on
the kitchen step and rubbing his white, Scotch-terrier whiskers. "I
reckon you've got all the musicians beat east and west, Sam, as far
as the roads are cut out."

"Oh, I don't know," said Sam, reflectively. "But I certainly do get
there on variations. I guess I can handle anything in five flats
about as well as any of 'em. But you look kind of fagged out, Uncle
Ben--ain't you feeling right well this evening?"

"Little tired; that's all, Sam. If you ain't played yourself out,
let's have that Mexican piece that starts off with: '_Huile, huile,
palomita_.' It seems that that song always kind of soothes and
comforts me after I've been riding far or anything bothers me."

"Why, _seguramente, senor_," said Sam. "I'll hit her up for you as
often as you like. And before I forget about it, Uncle Ben, you want
to jerk Bradshaw up about them last hams he sent us. They're just a
little bit strong."

A man sixty-five years old, living on a sheep ranch and beset by
a complication of disasters, cannot successfully and continuously
dissemble. Moreover, a troubadour has eyes quick to see unhappiness in
others around him--because it disturbs his own ease. So, on the next
day, Sam again questioned the old man about his air of sadness and
abstraction. Then old man Ellison told him the story of King James's
threats and orders and that pale melancholy and red ruin appeared
to have marked him for their own. The troubadour took the news
thoughtfully. He had heard much about King James.

On the third day of the seven days of grace allowed him by the
autocrat of the range, old man Ellison drove his buckboard to Frio
City to fetch some necessary supplies for the ranch. Bradshaw was hard
but not implacable. He divided the old man's order by two, and let him
have a little more time. One article secured was a new, fine ham for
the pleasure of the troubadour.

Five miles out of Frio City on his way home the old man met King James
riding into town. His majesty could never look anything but fierce and
menacing, but to-day his slits of eyes appeared to be a little wider
than they usually were.

"Good day," said the king, gruffly. "I've been wanting to see you.
I hear it said by a cowman from Sandy yesterday that you was from
Jackson County, Mississippi, originally. I want to know if that's a
fact."

"Born there," said old man Ellison, "and raised there till I was
twenty-one."

"This man says," went on King James, "that he thinks you was related
to the Jackson County Reeveses. Was he right?"

"Aunt Caroline Reeves," said the old man, "was my half-sister."

"She was my aunt," said King James. "I run away from home when I was
sixteen. Now, let's re-talk over some things that we discussed a few
days ago. They call me a bad man; and they're only half right. There's
plenty of room in my pasture for your bunch of sheep and their
increase for a long time to come. Aunt Caroline used to cut out sheep
in cake dough and bake 'em for me. You keep your sheep where they are,
and use all the range you want. How's your finances?"

The old man related his woes in detail, dignifiedly, with restraint
and candour.

"She used to smuggle extra grub into my school basket--I'm speaking of
Aunt Caroline," said King James. "I'm going over to Frio City to-day,
and I'll ride back by your ranch to-morrow. I'll draw $2,000 out of
the bank there and bring it over to you; and I'll tell Bradshaw to let
you have everything you want on credit. You are bound to have heard
the old saying at home, that the Jackson County Reeveses and Kings
would stick closer by each other than chestnut burrs. Well, I'm a
King yet whenever I run across a Reeves. So you look out for me along
about sundown to-morrow, and don't worry about nothing. Shouldn't
wonder if the dry spell don't kill out the young grass."

Old man Ellison drove happily ranchward. Once more the smiles filled
out his wrinkles. Very suddenly, by the magic of kinship and the good
that lies somewhere in all hearts, his troubles had been removed.

On reaching the ranch he found that Sam Galloway was not there. His
guitar hung by its buckskin string to a hackberry limb, moaning as the
gulf breeze blew across its masterless strings.

The Kiowa endeavoured to explain.

"Sam, he catch pony," said he, "and say he ride to Frio City. What for
no can damn sabe. Say he come back to-night. Maybe so. That all."

As the first stars came out the troubadour rode back to his haven. He
pastured his pony and went into the house, his spurs jingling
martially.

Old man Ellison sat at the kitchen table, having a tin cup of
before-supper coffee. He looked contented and pleased.

"Hello, Sam," said he. "I'm darned glad to see ye back. I don't know
how I managed to get along on this ranch, anyhow, before ye dropped in
to cheer things up. I'll bet ye've been skylarking around with some of
them Frio City gals, now, that's kept ye so late."

And then old man Ellison took another look at Sam's face and saw that
the minstrel had changed to the man of action.

And while Sam is unbuckling from his waist old man Ellison's
six-shooter, that the latter had left behind when he drove to town, we
may well pause to remark that anywhere and whenever a troubadour lays
down the guitar and takes up the sword trouble is sure to follow. It
is not the expert thrust of Athos nor the cold skill of Aramis nor
the iron wrist of Porthos that we have to fear--it is the Gascon's
fury--the wild and unacademic attack of the troubadour--the sword of
D'Artagnan.

"I done it," said Sam. "I went over to Frio City to do it. I couldn't
let him put the skibunk on you, Uncle Ben. I met him in Summers's
saloon. I knowed what to do. I said a few things to him that nobody
else heard. He reached for his gun first--half a dozen fellows saw him
do it--but I got mine unlimbered first. Three doses I gave him--right
around the lungs, and a saucer could have covered up all of 'em. He
won't bother you no more."

"This--is--King--James--you speak--of?" asked old man Ellison, while
he sipped his coffee.

"You bet it was. And they took me before the county judge; and the
witnesses what saw him draw his gun first was all there. Well, of
course, they put me under $300 bond to appear before the court, but
there was four or five boys on the spot ready to sign the bail. He
won't bother you no more, Uncle Ben. You ought to have seen how close
them bullet holes was together. I reckon playing a guitar as much as
I do must kind of limber a fellow's trigger finger up a little, don't
you think, Uncle Ben?"

Then there was a little silence in the castle except for the
spluttering of a venison steak that the Kiowa was cooking.

"Sam," said old man Ellison, stroking his white whiskers with a
tremulous hand, "would you mind getting the guitar and playing that
'_Huile, huile, palomita_' piece once or twice? It always seems to be
kind of soothing and comforting when a man's tired and fagged out."

There is no more to be said, except that the title of the story is
wrong. It should have been called "The Last of the Barons." There
never will be an end to the troubadours; and now and then it does seem
that the jingle of their guitars will drown the sound of the muffled
blows of the pickaxes and trip hammers of all the Workers in the
world.




II

THE SLEUTHS


In The Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and
completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out. All the
agencies of inquisition--the hounds of the trail, the sleuths of the
city's labyrinths, the closet detectives of theory and induction--will
be invoked to the search. Most often the man's face will be seen no
more. Sometimes he will reappear in Sheboygan or in the wilds of Terre
Haute, calling himself one of the synonyms of "Smith," and without
memory of events up to a certain time, including his grocer's bill.
Sometimes it will be found, after dragging the rivers, and polling the
restaurants to see if he may be waiting for a well-done sirloin, that
he has moved next door.