The Gentle Grafter

O >> O. Henry >> The Gentle Grafter


"And is that Alexander, pa?" says Caligula to the landlord; "and why
is he called great?"

"That, gentlemen," says the landlord, "is no less than Colonel Jackson
T. Rockingham, the president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad,
mayor of Mountain Valley, and chairman of the Perry County board of
immigration and public improvements."

"Been away a good many years, hasn't he?" I asked.

"No, sir; Colonel Rockingham is going down to the post-office for his
mail. His fellow-citizens take pleasure in greeting him thus every
morning. The colonel is our most prominent citizen. Besides the
height of the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, he owns
a thousand acres of that land across the creek. Mountain Valley
delights, sir, to honor a citizen of such worth and public spirit."

For an hour that afternoon Caligula sat on the back of his neck on the
porch and studied a newspaper, which was unusual in a man who despised
print. When he was through he took me to the end of the porch among
the sunlight and drying dish-towels. I knew that Caligula had invented
a new graft. For he chewed the ends of his mustache and ran the left
catch of his suspenders up and down, which was his way.

"What is it now?" I asks. "Just so it ain't floating mining stocks or
raising Pennsylvania pinks, we'll talk it over."

"Pennsylvania pinks? Oh, that refers to a coin-raising scheme of the
Keystoners. They burn the soles of old women's feet to make them tell
where their money's hid."

Caligula's words in business was always few and bitter.

"You see them mountains," said he, pointing. "And you seen that
colonel man that owns railroads and cuts more ice when he goes to the
post-office than Roosevelt does when he cleans 'em out. What we're
going to do is to kidnap the latter into the former, and inflict a
ransom of ten thousand dollars."

"Illegality," says I, shaking my head.

"I knew you'd say that," says Caligula. "At first sight it does seem
to jar peace and dignity. But it don't. I got the idea out of that
newspaper. Would you commit aspersions on a equitable graft that the
United States itself has condoned and indorsed and ratified?"

"Kidnapping," says I, "is an immoral function in the derogatory list
of the statutes. If the United States upholds it, it must be a recent
enactment of ethics, along with race suicide and rural delivery."

"Listen," says Caligula, "and I'll explain the case set down in the
papers. Here was a Greek citizen named Burdick Harris," says he,
"captured for a graft by Africans; and the United States sends two
gunboats to the State of Tangiers and makes the King of Morocco give
up seventy thousand dollars to Raisuli."

"Go slow," says I. "That sounds too international to take in all at
once. It's like 'thimble, thimble, who's got the naturalization
papers?'"

"'Twas press despatches from Constantinople," says Caligula. "You'll
see, six months from now. They'll be confirmed by the monthly magazines;
and then it won't be long till you'll notice 'em alongside the photos
of the Mount Pelee eruption photos in the while-you-get-your-hair-cut
weeklies. It's all right, Pick. This African man Raisuli hides Burdick
Harris up in the mountains, and advertises his price to the governments
of different nations. Now, you wouldn't think for a minute," goes on
Caligula, "that John Hay would have chipped in and helped this graft
along if it wasn't a square game, would you?"

"Why, no," says I. "I've always stood right in with Bryan's policies,
and I couldn't consciously say a word against the Republican
administration just now. But if Harris was a Greek, on what system of
international protocols did Hay interfere?"

"It ain't exactly set forth in the papers," says Caligula. "I suppose
it's a matter of sentiment. You know he wrote this poem, 'Little
Breeches'; and them Greeks wear little or none. But anyhow, John Hay
sends the Brooklyn and the Olympia over, and they cover Africa with
thirty-inch guns. And then Hay cables after the health of the _persona
grata_. 'And how are they this morning?' he wires. 'Is Burdick Harris
alive yet, or Mr. Raisuli dead?' And the King of Morocco sends up the
seventy thousand dollars, and they turn Burdick Harris loose. And
there's not half the hard feelings among the nations about this little
kidnapping matter as there was about the peace congress. And Burdick
Harris says to the reporters, in the Greek language, that he's often
heard about the United States, and he admires Roosevelt next to
Raisuli, who is one of the whitest and most gentlemanly kidnappers
that he ever worked alongside of. So you see, Pick," winds up
Caligula, "we've got the law of nations on our side. We'll cut this
colonel man out of the herd, and corral him in them little mountains,
and stick up his heirs and assigns for ten thousand dollars."

"Well, you seldom little red-headed territorial terror," I answers,
"you can't bluff your uncle Tecumseh Pickens! I'll be your company in
this graft. But I misdoubt if you've absorbed the inwardness of this
Burdick Harris case, Calig; and if on any morning we get a telegram
from the Secretary of State asking about the health of the scheme,
I propose to acquire the most propinquitous and celeritous mule in
this section and gallop diplomatically over into the neighboring and
peaceful nation of Alabama."



III

Me and Caligula spent the next three days investigating the bunch
of mountains into which we proposed to kidnap Colonel Jackson T.
Rockingham. We finally selected an upright slice of topography covered
with bushes and trees that you could only reach by a secret path that
we cut out up the side of it. And the only way to reach the mountain
was to follow up the bend of a branch that wound among the elevations.

Then I took in hand an important subdivision of the
proceedings. I went up to Atlanta on the train and laid in a
two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar supply of the most gratifying and
efficient lines of grub that money could buy. I always was an admirer
of viands in their more palliative and revised stages. Hog and hominy
are not only inartistic to my stomach, but they give indigestion to
my moral sentiments. And I thought of Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham,
president of the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad, and how he would
miss the luxury of his home fare as is so famous among wealthy
Southerners. So I sunk half of mine and Caligula's capital in as
elegant a layout of fresh and canned provisions as Burdick Harris or
any other professional kidnappee ever saw in a camp.

I put another hundred in a couple of cases of Bordeaux, two quarts
of cognac, two hundred Havana regalias with gold bands, and a camp
stove and stools and folding cots. I wanted Colonel Rockingham to be
comfortable; and I hoped after he gave up the ten thousand dollars
he would give me and Caligula as good a name for gentlemen and
entertainers as the Greek man did the friend of his that made the
United States his bill collector against Africa.

When the goods came down from Atlanta, we hired a wagon, moved them up
on the little mountain, and established camp. And then we laid for the
colonel.

We caught him one morning about two miles out from Mountain Valley,
on his way to look after some of his burnt umber farm land. He was an
elegant old gentleman, as thin and tall as a trout rod, with frazzled
shirt-cuffs and specs on a black string. We explained to him, brief
and easy, what we wanted; and Caligula showed him, careless, the
handle of his forty-five under his coat.

"What?" says Colonel Rockingham. "Bandits in Perry County, Georgia! I
shall see that the board of immigration and public improvements hears
of this!"

"Be so unfoolhardy as to climb into that buggy," says Caligula, "by
order of the board of perforation and public depravity. This is a
business meeting, and we're anxious to adjourn _sine qua non_."

We drove Colonel Rockingham over the mountain and up the side of it
as far as the buggy could go. Then we tied the horse, and took our
prisoner on foot up to the camp.

"Now, colonel," I says to him, "we're after the ransom, me and my
partner; and no harm will come to you if the King of Mor--if your
friends send up the dust. In the mean time we are gentlemen the same
as you. And if you give us your word not to try to escape, the freedom
of the camp is yours."

"I give you my word," says the colonel.

"All right," says I; "and now it's eleven o'clock, and me and Mr. Polk
will proceed to inculcate the occasion with a few well-timed
trivialities in the way of grub."

"Thank you," says the colonel; "I believe I could relish a slice of
bacon and a plate of hominy."

"But you won't," says I emphatic. "Not in this camp. We soar in higher
regions than them occupied by your celebrated but repulsive dish."

While the colonel read his paper, me and Caligula took off our coats
and went in for a little luncheon _de luxe_ just to show him. Caligula
was a fine cook of the Western brand. He could toast a buffalo or
fricassee a couple of steers as easy as a woman could make a cup of
tea. He was gifted in the way of knocking together edibles when haste
and muscle and quantity was to be considered. He held the record west
of the Arkansas River for frying pancakes with his left hand, broiling
venison cutlets with his right, and skinning a rabbit with his teeth
at the same time. But I could do things _en casserole_ and _a la
creole_, and handle the oil and tobasco as gently and nicely as a
French _chef_.

So at twelve o'clock we had a hot lunch ready that looked like a
banquet on a Mississippi River steamboat. We spread it on the tops of
two or three big boxes, opened two quarts of the red wine, set the
olives and a canned oyster cocktail and a ready-made Martini by the
colonel's plate, and called him to grub.

Colonel Rockingham drew up his campstool, wiped off his specs, and
looked at the things on the table. Then I thought he was swearing; and
I felt mean because I hadn't taken more pains with the victuals. But
he wasn't; he was asking a blessing; and me and Caligula hung our
heads, and I saw a tear drop from the colonel's eye into his cocktail.

I never saw a man eat with so much earnestness and application--not
hastily, like a grammarian, or one of the canal, but slow and
appreciative, like a anaconda, or a real _vive bonjour_.

In an hour and a half the colonel leaned back. I brought him a pony of
brandy and his black coffee, and set the box of Havana regalias on the
table.

"Gentlemen," says he, blowing out the smoke and trying to breathe
it back again, "when we view the eternal hills and the smiling and
beneficent landscape, and reflect upon the goodness of the Creator
who--"

"Excuse me, colonel," says I, "but there's some business to attend to
now"; and I brought out paper and pen and ink and laid 'em before him.
"Who do you want to send to for the money?" I asks.

"I reckon," says he, after thinking a bit, "to the vice-president of
our railroad, at the general offices of the Company in Edenville."

"How far is it to Edenville from here?" I asked.

"About ten miles," says he.

Then I dictated these lines, and Colonel Rockingham wrote them out:


I am kidnapped and held a prisoner by two desperate outlaws
in a place which is useless to attempt to find. They demand
ten thousand dollars at once for my release. The amount must
be raised immediately, and these directions followed. Come
alone with the money to Stony Creek, which runs out of
Blacktop Mountains. Follow the bed of the creek till you
come to a big flat rock on the left bank, on which is marked
a cross in red chalk. Stand on the rock and wave a white
flag. A guide will come to you and conduct you to where I am
held. Lose no time.


After the colonel had finished this, he asked permission to take on a
postscript about how he was being treated, so the railroad wouldn't
feel uneasy in its bosom about him. We agreed to that. He wrote down
that he had just had lunch with the two desperate ruffians; and then
he set down the whole bill of fare, from cocktails to coffee. He wound
up with the remark that dinner would be ready about six, and would
probably be a more licentious and intemperate affair than lunch.

Me and Caligula read it, and decided to let it go; for we, being
cooks, were amenable to praise, though it sounded out of place on a
sight draft for ten thousand dollars.

I took the letter over to the Mountain Valley road and watched for a
messenger. By and by a colored equestrian came along on horseback,
riding toward Edenville. I gave him a dollar to take the letter to the
railroad offices; and then I went back to camp.



IV

About four o'clock in the afternoon, Caligula, who was acting as
lookout, calls to me:

"I have to report a white shirt signalling on the starboard bow, sir."

I went down the mountain and brought back a fat, red man in an alpaca
coat and no collar.

"Gentlemen," says Colonel Rockingham, "allow me to introduce my
brother, Captain Duval C. Rockingham, vice-president of the Sunrise &
Edenville Tap Railroad."

"Otherwise the King of Morocco," says I. "I reckon you don't mind my
counting the ransom, just as a business formality."

"Well, no, not exactly," says the fat man, "not when it comes. I
turned that matter over to our second vice-president. I was anxious
after Brother Jackson's safetiness. I reckon he'll be along right
soon. What does that lobster salad you mentioned taste like, Brother
Jackson?"

"Mr. Vice-President," says I, "you'll oblige us by remaining here till
the second V. P. arrives. This is a private rehearsal, and we don't
want any roadside speculators selling tickets."

In half an hour Caligula sings out again:

"Sail ho! Looks like an apron on a broomstick."

I perambulated down the cliff again, and escorted up a man six foot
three, with a sandy beard and no other dimension that you could
notice. Thinks I to myself, if he's got ten thousand dollars on his
person it's in one bill and folded lengthwise.

"Mr. Patterson G. Coble, our second vice-president," announces the
colonel.

"Glad to know you, gentlemen," says this Coble. "I came up to
disseminate the tidings that Major Tallahassee Tucker, our general
passenger agent, is now negotiating a peachcrate full of our railroad
bonds with the Perry County Bank for a loan. My dear Colonel
Rockingham, was that chicken gumbo or cracked goobers on the bill of
fare in your note? Me and the conductor of fifty-six was having a
dispute about it."

"Another white wings on the rocks!" hollers Caligula. "If I see any
more I'll fire on 'em and swear they was torpedo-boats!"

The guide goes down again, and convoys into the lair a person in blue
overalls carrying an amount of inebriety and a lantern. I am so sure
that this is Major Tucker that I don't even ask him until we are
up above; and then I discover that it is Uncle Timothy, the yard
switchman at Edenville, who is sent ahead to flag our understandings
with the gossip that Judge Pendergast, the railroad's attorney, is in
the process of mortgaging Colonel Rockingham's farming lands to make
up the ransom.

While he is talking, two men crawl from under the bushes into camp,
and Caligula, with no white flag to disinter him from his plain duty,
draws his gun. But again Colonel Rockingham intervenes and introduces
Mr. Jones and Mr. Batts, engineer and fireman of train number
forty-two.

"Excuse us," says Batts, "but me and Jim have hunted squirrels
all over this mounting, and we don't need no white flag. Was that
straight, colonel, about the plum pudding and pineapples and real
store cigars?"

"Towel on a fishing-pole in the offing!" howls Caligula. "Suppose it's
the firing line of the freight conductors and brakeman."

"My last trip down," says I, wiping off my face. "If the S. & E. T.
wants to run an excursion up here just because we kidnapped their
president, let 'em. We'll put out our sign. 'The Kidnapper's Cafe and
Trainmen's Home.'"

This time I caught Major Tallahassee Tucker by his own confession, and
I felt easier. I asked him into the creek, so I could drown him if he
happened to be a track-walker or caboose porter. All the way up the
mountain he driveled to me about asparagus on toast, a thing that his
intelligence in life had skipped.

Up above I got his mind segregated from food and asked if he had
raised the ransom.

"My dear sir," says he, "I succeeded in negotiating a loan on thirty
thousand dollars' worth of the bonds of our railroad, and--"

"Never mind just now, major," says I. "It's all right, then. Wait till
after dinner, and we'll settle the business. All of you gentlemen,"
I continues to the crowd, "are invited to stay to dinner. We have
mutually trusted one another, and the white flag is supposed to wave
over the proceedings."

"The correct idea," says Caligula, who was standing by me. "Two
baggage-masters and a ticket-agent dropped out of a tree while you was
below the last time. Did the major man bring the money?"

"He says," I answered, "that he succeeded in negotiating the loan."

If any cooks ever earned ten thousand dollars in twelve hours, me
and Caligula did that day. At six o'clock we spread the top of the
mountain with as fine a dinner as the personnel of any railroad ever
engulfed. We opened all the wine, and we concocted entrees and _pieces
de resistance_, and stirred up little savory _chef de cuisines_ and
organized a mass of grub such as has been seldom instigated out of
canned and bottled goods. The railroad gathered around it, and the
wassail and diversions was intense.

After the feast me and Caligula, in the line of business, takes
Major Tucker to one side and talks ransom. The major pulls out an
agglomeration of currency about the size of the price of a town lot in
the suburbs of Rabbitville, Arizona, and makes this outcry.

"Gentlemen," says he, "the stock of the Sunrise & Edenville railroad
has depreciated some. The best I could do with thirty thousand
dollars' worth of the bonds was to secure a loan of eighty-seven
dollars and fifty cents. On the farming lands of Colonel Rockingham,
Judge Pendergast was able to obtain, on a ninth mortgage, the sum of
fifty dollars. You will find the amount, one hundred and thirty-seven
fifty, correct."

"A railroad president," said I, looking this Tucker in the eye, "and
the owner of a thousand acres of land; and yet--"

"Gentlemen," says Tucker, "The railroad is ten miles long. There don't
any train run on it except when the crew goes out in the pines and
gathers enough lightwood knots to get up steam. A long time ago, when
times was good, the net earnings used to run as high as eighteen
dollars a week. Colonel Rockingham's land has been sold for taxes
thirteen times. There hasn't been a peach crop in this part of Georgia
for two years. The wet spring killed the watermelons. Nobody around
here has money enough to buy fertilizer; and land is so poor the corn
crop failed and there wasn't enough grass to support the rabbits. All
the people have had to eat in this section for over a year is hog and
hominy, and--"

"Pick," interrupts Caligula, mussing up his red hair, "what are you
going to do with that chicken-feed?"

I hands the money back to Major Tucker; and then I goes over to
Colonel Rockingham and slaps him on the back.

"Colonel," says I, "I hope you've enjoyed our little joke. We don't
want to carry it too far. Kidnappers! Well, wouldn't it tickle your
uncle? My name's Rhinegelder, and I'm a nephew of Chauncey Depew. My
friend's a second cousin of the editor of _Puck_. So you can see. We
are down South enjoying ourselves in our humorous way. Now, there's
two quarts of cognac to open yet, and then the joke's over."

What's the use to go into details? One or two will be enough. I remember
Major Tallahassee Tucker playing on a jew's-harp, and Caligula waltzing
with his head on the watch pocket of a tall baggage-master. I hesitate
to refer to the cake-walk done by me and Mr. Patterson G. Coble with
Colonel Jackson T. Rockingham between us.

And even on the next morning, when you wouldn't think it possible,
there was a consolation for me and Caligula. We knew that Raisuli
himself never made half the hit with Burdick Harris that we did with
the Sunrise & Edenville Tap Railroad.




THE ETHICS OF PIG


On an east-bound train I went into the smoker and found Jefferson
Peters, the only man with a brain west of the Wabash River who can use
his cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla oblongata at the same time.

Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. He is not to be dreaded by
widows and orphans; he is a reducer of surplusage. His favorite
disguise is that of the target-bird at which the spendthrift or the
reckless investor may shy a few inconsequential dollars. He is readily
vocalized by tobacco; so, with the aid of two thick and easy-burning
brevas, I got the story of his latest Autolycan adventure.

"In my line of business," said Jeff, "the hardest thing is to find an
upright, trustworthy, strictly honorable partner to work a graft with.
Some of the best men I ever worked with in a swindle would resort to
trickery at times.

"So, last summer, I thinks I will go over into this section of country
where I hear the serpent has not yet entered, and see if I can find a
partner naturally gifted with a talent for crime, but not yet
contaminated by success.

"I found a village that seemed to show the right kind of a layout. The
inhabitants hadn't found that Adam had been dispossessed, and were
going right along naming the animals and killing snakes just as if
they were in the Garden of Eden. They call this town Mount Nebo, and
it's up near the spot where Kentucky and West Virginia and North
Carolina corner together. Them States don't meet? Well, it was in that
neighborhood, anyway.

"After putting in a week proving I wasn't a revenue officer, I went
over to the store where the rude fourflushers of the hamlet lied, to
see if I could get a line on the kind of man I wanted.

"'Gentlemen,' says I, after we had rubbed noses and gathered 'round
the dried-apple barrel. 'I don't suppose there's another community
in the whole world into which sin and chicanery has less extensively
permeated than this. Life here, where all the women are brave and
propitious and all the men honest and expedient, must, indeed, be
an idol. It reminds me,' says I, 'of Goldstein's beautiful ballad
entitled "The Deserted Village," which says:


'Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
What art can drive its charms away?
The judge rode slowly down the lane, mother.
For I'm to be Queen of the May.'


"'Why, yes, Mr. Peters,' says the storekeeper. 'I reckon we air about
as moral and torpid a community as there be on the mounting, according
to censuses of opinion; but I reckon you ain't ever met Rufe Tatum.'

"'Why, no,' says the town constable, 'he can't hardly have ever. That
air Rufe is shore the monstrousest scalawag that has escaped hangin'
on the galluses. And that puts me in mind that I ought to have turned
Rufe out of the lockup before yesterday. The thirty days he got for
killin' Yance Goodloe was up then. A day or two more won't hurt Rufe
any, though.'

"'Shucks, now,' says I, in the mountain idiom, 'don't tell me there's
a man in Mount Nebo as bad as that.'

"'Worse,' says the storekeeper. 'He steals hogs.'

"I think I will look up this Mr. Tatum; so a day or two after the
constable turned him out I got acquainted with him and invited him out
on the edge of town to sit on a log and talk business.

"What I wanted was a partner with a natural rural make-up to play a
part in some little one-act outrages that I was going to book with the
Pitfall & Gin circuit in some of the Western towns; and this R. Tatum
was born for the role as sure as nature cast Fairbanks for the stuff
that kept _Eliza_ from sinking into the river.

"He was about the size of a first baseman; and he had ambiguous blue
eyes like the china dog on the mantelpiece that Aunt Harriet used to
play with when she was a child. His hair waved a little bit like the
statue of the dinkus-thrower at the Vacation in Rome, but the color
of it reminded you of the 'Sunset in the Grand Canon, by an American
Artist,' that they hang over the stove-pipe holes in the salongs.
He was the Reub, without needing a touch. You'd have known him for
one, even if you'd seen him on the vaudeville stage with one cotton
suspender and a straw over his ear.

"I told him what I wanted, and found him ready to jump at the job.

"'Overlooking such a trivial little peccadillo as the habit of
manslaughter,' says I, 'what have you accomplished in the way of
indirect brigandage or nonactionable thriftiness that you could point
to, with or without pride, as an evidence of your qualifications for
the position?'

"'Why,' says he, in his kind of Southern system of procrastinated
accents, 'hain't you heard tell? There ain't any man, black or white,
in the Blue Ridge that can tote off a shoat as easy as I can without
bein' heard, seen, or cotched. I can lift a shoat,' he goes on, 'out
of a pen, from under a porch, at the trough, in the woods, day or
night, anywhere or anyhow, and I guarantee nobody won't hear a squeal.
It's all in the way you grab hold of 'em and carry 'em atterwards.
Some day,' goes on this gentle despoiler of pig-pens, 'I hope to
become reckernized as the champion shoat-stealer of the world.'