O. Henry

                   The Passing of Black Eagle


   For some months of a certain year a grim bandit infested the Texas 
border along the Rio Grande. Peculiarly striking to the optic nerve 
was this notorious marauder. His personality secured him the title of 
"Black Eagle, the Terror of the Border." Many fearsome tales are on 
record concerning the doings of him and his followers. Suddenly, in 
the space of a single minute, Black Eagle vanished from earth. He was 
never heard of again. His own band never even guessed the mystery of 
his disappearance. The border ranches and settlements feared he would 
come again to ride and ravage the mesquite flats. He never will. It is 
to disclose the fate of Black Eagle that this narrative is written.
   The initial movement of the story is furnished by the foot of a 
bar-tender in St. Louis. His discerning eye fell upon the form of 
Chicken Ruggles as he pecked with avidity at the free lunch. Chicken 
was a "hobo." He had a long nose like the bill of a fowl, an 
inordinate appetite for poultry, and a habit of gratifying it without 
expense which accounts for the name given him by his fellow-vagrants.
   Physicians agree that the partaking of liquids at meal times is not 
a healthy practice. The hygiene of the saloon promulgates the 
opposite. Chicken had neglected to purchase a drink to accompany his 
meal. The bar-tender rounded the counter, caught the injudicious diner 
by the ear with a lemon squeezer, led him to the door and kicked him 
into the street.
   Thus the mind of Chicken was brought to realise the signs of coming 
winter. The night was cold; the stars shone with unkindly brilliancy; 
people were hurrying along the streets in two egotistic, jostling 
streams. Men had donned their overcoats, and Chicken knew to an exact 
percentage the increased difficulty of coaxing dimes from those 
buttoned-in best pockets. The time had come for his annual exodus to 
the south.
   A little boy, five or six years old, stood looking with covetous 
eyes in a confectioner's window. In one small hand he held an empty 
two-ounce vial; in the other he grasped tightly something flat and 
round, with a shining milled edge. The scene presented a field of 
operations commensurate to Chicken's talents and daring. After 
sweeping the horizon to make sure that no official tug was cruising 
near, he insidiously accosted his prey. The boy, having been early 
taught by his household to regard altruistic advances with extreme 
suspicion, received the overtures coldly.
   Then Chicken knew that he must make one of those desperate, nerve-
shattering plunges into speculation that fortune sometimes requires of 
those who would win her favour. Five cents was his capital, and this 
he must risk against the chance of winning what lay within the close 
grasp of the youngster's chubby hand. It was a fearful lottery, 
Chicken knew. But he must accomplish his ends by strategy, since he 
had a wholesome terror of plundering infants by force. Once, in a 
park, driven by hunger, he had committed an onslaught upon a bottle of 
peptonised infant's food in the possession of an occupant of a baby 
carriage. The outraged infant had so promptly opened its mouth and 
pressed the button that communicated with the welkin that help 
arrived, and Chicken did his thirty days in a snug coop. Wherefore he 
was, as he said, "leary of kids."
   Beginning artfully to question the boy concerning his choice of 
sweets, he gradually drew out the information he wanted. Mamma said he 
was to ask the, drug-store man for ten cents' worth of paregoric in 
the bottle; he was to keep his hand shut tight over the dollar; he 
must not stop to talk to anyone in the street; he must ask the drug-
store man to wrap up the change and put it in the pocket of his 
trousers. Indeed, they had pockets-two of them! And he liked chocolate 
creams best.
   Chicken went into the store and turned plunger. He invested his 
entire capital in C. A. N. D. Y. stocks, simply to pave the way to the 
greater risk following.
   He gave the sweets to the youngster, and had the satisfaction of 
perceiving that confidence was established. After that it was easy to 
obtain leadership of the expedition; to take the investment by the 
hand and lead it to a nice drug store he knew of in the same block. 
There Chicken, with a parental air, passed over the dollar and called 
for the medicine, while the boy crunched his candy, glad to be 
relieved of the responsibility of the purchase. And then the 
successful investor, searching his pockets, found an overcoat button-
the extent of his winter trousseau-and, wrapping it carefully, placed 
the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding juvenility. Setting 
the youngster's face homeward, and patting him benevolently on the 
back-for Chicken's heart was as soft as those of his feathered 
namesakes-the speculator quit the market with a profit of 1700 per 
cent on his invested capital.
   Two hours later an Iron Mountain freight engine pulled out of the 
railroad yards, Texas bound, with a string of empties. In one of the 
cattle cars, half buried in excelsior, Chicken lay at ease. Beside him 
in his nest was a quart bottle of very poor whisky and a paper bag of 
bread and cheese. Mr. Ruggles, in his private car, was on his trip 
south for the winter season.
   For a week that car was trundled southward, shifted, laid over, and 
manipulated after the manner of rolling stock, but Chicken stuck to 
it, leaving it only at necessary times to satisfy his hunger and 
thirst. He knew it must go down to the cattle country, and San 
Antonio, in the heart of it, was his goal. There the air was 
salubrious and mild; the people indulgent and long-suffering. The bar-
tenders there would not kick him. If he should eat too long or too 
often at one place they would swear at him as if by rote and without 
heat. They swore so drawlingly, and they rarely paused short of their 
full vocabulary, which was copious, so that Chicken had often gulped a 
good meal during the process of the vituperative prohibition. The 
season there was always spring-like; the plazas were pleasant at 
night, with music and gaiety; except during the slight and infrequent 
cold snaps one could sleep comfortably out of doors in case the 
interiors should develop inhospitality.
   At Texarkana his car was switched to the I. and G. N. Then still 
southward it trailed until, at length, it crawled across the Colorado 
bridge at Austin, and lined out, straight as an arrow, for the run to 
San Antonio.
   When the freight halted at that town Chicken was fast asleep. In 
ten minutes the train was off again for Laredo, the end of the road. 
Those empty cattle cars were for distribution along the line at points 
from which the ranches shipped their stock.
   When Chicken awoke his car was stationary. Looking out between the 
slats he saw it was a bright, moonlit night. Scrambling out, he saw 
his car with three others abandoned on a little siding in a wild and 
lonesome country. A cattle pen and chute stood on one side of the 
track. The railroad bisected a vast, dim ocean of prairie, in the 
midst of which Chicken, with his futile rolling stock, was as 
completely stranded as was Robinson with his land-locked boat.
   A white post stood near the rails. Going up to it, Chicken read the 
letters at the top, S. A. 90. Laredo was nearly as far to the south. 
He was almost a hundred miles from any town. Coyotes began to yelp in 
the mysterious sea around him. Chicken felt lonesome. He had lived in 
Boston without an education, in Chicago without nerve, in Philadelphia 
without a sleeping place, in New York without a pull, and in Pittsburg 
sober, and yet he had never felt so lonely as now.
   Suddenly through the intense silence he heard the whicker of a 
horse. The sound came from the side of the track toward the east, and 
Chicken began to explore timorously in that direction. He stepped high 
along the mat of curly mesquit grass, for he was afraid of everything 
there might be in this wilderness-snakes, rats, brigands, centipedes, 
mirages, cowboys, fandangoes, tarantulas, tamales-he had read of them 
in the story papers. Rounding a clump of prickly pear that reared high 
its fantastic and menacing array of rounded heads, he was struck to 
shivering terror by a snort and a thunderous plunge, as the horse, 
himself startled, bounded away some fifty yards, and then resumed his 
grazing. But here was the one thing in the desert that Chicken did not 
fear. He had been reared on a farm; he had handled horses, understood 
them, and could ride.
   Approaching slowly and speaking soothingly, he followed the animal, 
which, after its first flight, seemed gentle enough, and secured the 
end of the twenty-foot lariat that dragged after him in the grass. It 
required him but a few moments to contrive the rope into an ingenious 
nose-bridle, after the style of the Mexican borsal. In another 
he was upon the horse's back and off at a splendid lope, giving the 
animal free choice of direction. "He will take me somewhere," said 
Chicken to himself.
   It would have been a thing of joy, that untrammelled gallop over 
the moonlit prairie, even to Chicken, who loathed exertion, but that 
his mood was not for it. His head ached; a growing thirst was upon 
him; the "somewhere" whither his lucky mount might convey him was full 
of dismal peradventure.
   And now he noted that the horse moved to a definite goal. Where the 
prairie lay smooth he lept his course straight as an arrow's toward 
the east. Deflected by hill or arroyo or impracticable spinous brakes, 
he quickly flowed again into the current, charted by his unerring 
instinct. At last, upon the side of a gentle rise, he suddenly 
subsided to a complacent walk. A stone's cast away stood a little mott 
of coma trees; beneath it a jacal such as the Mexicans erect-a 
one-room house of upright poles daubed with clay and roofed with grass 
or tule reeds. An experienced eye would have estimated the spot as the 
headquarters of a small sheep ranch. In the moonlight the ground in 
the near-by corral showed pulverised to a level smoothness by the 
hoofs of the sheep. Everywhere was carelessly distributed the 
paraphernalia of the place-ropes, bridles, saddles, sheep pelts, wool 
sacks, feed troughs, and camp litter. The barrel of drinking water 
stood in the end of the two-horse wagon near the door. The harness was 
piled, promiscuous, upon the wagon tongue, soaking up the dew.
   Chicken slipped to earth, and tied the horse to a tree. He halloed 
again and again, but the house remained quiet. The door stood open, 
and he entered cautiously. The light was sufficient for him to see 
that no one was at home. He struck a match and lighted a lamp that 
stood on a table. The room was that of a bachelor ranchman who was 
content with the necessaries of life. Chicken rummaged intelligently 
until he found what he had hardly dared hope for-a small brown jug 
that still contained something near a quart of his desire.
   Half an hour later, Chicken-now a gamecock of hostile aspect-
emerged from the house with unsteady steps. He had drawn upon the 
absent ranchman's equipment to replace his own ragged attire. He wore 
a suit of coarse brown ducking, the coat being a sort of rakish 
bolero, jaunty to a degree. Boots he had donned, and spurs that 
whirred with every lurching step. Buckled around him was a belt full 
of cartridges with a big six-shooter in each of its two holsters. 
Prowling about, he found blankets, a saddle and bridle with which he 
caparisoned his steed. Again mounting, he rode swiftly away, singing a 
loud and tuneless song.
   Bud King's band of desperadoes, outlaws, and horse and cattle 
thieves were in camp at a secluded spot on the bank of the Frio. Their 
depredations in the Rio Grande country, while no bolder than usual, 
had been advertised more extensively, and Captain Kinney's company of 
rangers had been ordered down to look after them. Consequently, Bud 
King, who was a wise general, instead of cutting out a hot trail for 
the upholders of the law, as his men wished to do, retired for the 
time to the prickly fastnesses of the Frio valley.
   Though the move was a prudent one, and not incompatible with Bud's 
well-known courage, it raised dissension among the members of the 
band. In fact, while they thus lay ingloriously perdu in the 
brush, the question of Bud King's fitness for the leadership was 
argued, with closed doors, as it were, by his followers. Never before 
had Bud's skill or efficiency been brought to criticism; but his glory 
was waning (and such is glory's fate) in the light of a newer star. 
The sentiment of the band was crystallising into the opinion that 
Black Eagle could lead them with more lustre, profit, and distinction.
   This Black Eagle-sub-titled the "Terror of the Border"-had been a 
member of the gang about three months.
   One night while they were in camp on the San Miguel water-hole a 
solitary horseman on the regulation fiery steed dashed in among them. 
The newcomer was of a portentous and devastating aspect. A beak-like 
nose with a predatory curve projected above a mass of bristling, blue-
black whiskers. His eye was cavernous and fierce. He was spurred, 
sombreroed, booted, garnished with revolvers, abundantly drunk, and 
very much unafraid. Few people in the country drained by the Rio Bravo 
would have cared thus to invade alone the camp of Bud King. But this 
fell bird swooped fearlessly upon them and demanded to be fed.
   Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your 
enemy pass your way you must feed him before you shoot him. You must 
empty your larder into him before you empty your lead. So the stranger 
of undeclared intentions was set down to a mighty feast.
   A talkative bird he was, full of most marvellous loud tales and 
exploits, and speaking a language at times obscure but never 
colourless. He was a new sensation to Bud King's men, who rarely 
encountered new types. They hung, delighted, upon his vainglorious 
boasting, the spicy strangeness of his lingo, his contemptuous 
familiarity with life, the world, and remote places, and the 
extravagant frankness with which he conveyed his sentiments.
   To their guest the band of outlaws seemed to be nothing more than a 
congregation of country bumpkins whom he was "stringing for grub" just 
as he would have told his stories at the back door of a farmhouse to 
wheedle a meal. And, indeed, his ignorance was not without excuse, for 
the "bad man" of the South-west does not run to extremes. Those 
brigands might justly have been taken for a little party of peaceable 
rustics assembled for a fish-fry or pecan gathering. Gentle of manner, 
slouching of gait, soft-voiced, unpicturesquely clothed; not one of 
them presented to the eye any witness of the desperate records they 
had earned.
   For two days the glittering stranger within the camp was feasted. 
Then, by common consent, he was invited to become a member of the 
band. He consented, presenting for enrolment the prodigious name of 
"Captain Montressor." This name was immediately overruled by the band, 
and "Piggy" substituted as a compliment to the awful and insatiate 
appetite of its owner.
   Thus did the Texas border receive the most spectacular brigand that 
ever rode its chaparral.
   For the next three months Bud King conducted business as usual, 
escaping encounters with law officers and being content with 
reasonable profits. The band ran off some very good companies of 
horses from the ranges, and a few bunches of fine cattle which they 
got safely across the Rio Grande and disposed of to fair advantage. 
Often the band would ride into the little villages and Mexican 
settlements, terrorising the inhabitants and plundering for the 
provisions and ammunition they needed. It was during these bloodless 
raids that Piggy's ferocious aspect and frightful voice gained him a 
renown more widespread and glorious than those other gentle-voiced and 
sad-faced desperadoes could have acquired in a lifetime.
   The Mexicans, most apt in nomenclature, first called him The Black 
Eagle, and used to frighten the babes by threatening them with tales 
of the dreadful robber who carried off little children in his great 
beak. Soon the name extended, and Black Eagle, the Terror of the 
Border, became a recognised factor in exaggerated newspaper reports 
and ranch gossip.
   The country from the Nueces to the Rio Grande was a wild but 
fertile stretch, given over to the sheep and cattle ranches. Range was 
free; the inhabitants were few; the law was mainly a letter, and the 
pirates met with little opposition until the flaunting and garish 
Piggy gave the band undue advertisement. Then McKinney's ranger 
company headed for those precincts, and Bud King knew that it meant 
grim and sudden war or else temporary retirement. Regarding the risk 
to be unnecessary, he drew off his band to an almost inaccessible spot 
on the bank of the Frio. Wherefore, as has been said, dissatisfaction 
arose among the members, and impeachment proceedings against Bud were 
premeditated, with Black Eagle in high favour for the succession. Bud 
King was not unaware of the sentiment, and he called aside Cactus 
Taylor, his trusted lieutenant, to discuss it.
   "If the boys," said Bud, "ain't satisfied with me, I'm willin' to 
step out. They're buckin' against my way of handlin' 'em. And 
'specially because I concludes to hit the brush while Sam Kinney is 
ridin' the line. I saves 'em from bein' shot or sent up on a state 
contract, and they up and says I'm no good."
   "It ain's so much that," explained Cactus, "as it is they're plum 
locoed about Piggy. They want them whiskers and that nose of his to 
split the wind at the head of the column."
   "There's somethin' mighty seldom about Piggy," declared Bud 
musingly. "I never yet see anything on the hoof that he exactly grades 
up with. He can shore holler a plenty, and he straddles a hoss from 
where you laid the chunk. But he ain't never been smoked yet. You 
know, Cactus, we ain't had a row since he's been with us. Piggy's all 
right for skearin' the greaser kids and layin' waste a cross-roads 
store. I reckon he's the finest canned oyster buccaneer and cheese 
pirate that ever was, but how's his appetite for fightin'? I've knowed 
some citizens you'd think was starvin' for trouble get a bad case of 
dyspepsy the first dose of lead they had to take."
   "He talks all spraddled out," said Cactus, "'bout the rookuses he's 
been in. He claims to have saw the elephant and hearn the owl."
   "I know," replied Bud, using the cowpuncher's expressive phrase of 
scepticism, "but it sounds to me!"
   This conversation was held one night in camp while the other 
members of the band-eight in number-were sprawling around the fire, 
lingering over their supper. When Bud and Cactus ceased talking they 
heard Piggy's formidable voice holding forth to the others as usual 
while he was engaged in checking, though never satisfying, his 
ravening appetite.
   "Wat's de use," he was saying, "of chasin' little red cowses and 
hosses 'round for t'ousands of miles? Dere ain't nuttin' in it. 
Gallopin' t'rough dese bushes and briers, and gettin' a t'irst dat a 
brewery could't put out, and missin' meals! Say! You know what I'd do 
if I was main finger of dis bunch? I'd stick up a train. I'd blow de 
express car and make hard dollars where you guys gets wind. Youse 
makes me tired. Dis sook-cow kind of cheap sport gives me a pain."
   Later on, a deputation waited on Bud. They stood on one leg, chewed 
mesquit twigs and circumlocuted, for they hated to hurt his feelings. 
Bud foresaw their business, and made it easy for them. Bigger risks 
and larger profits was what they wanted.
   The suggestion of Piggy's about holding up a train had fired their 
imagination and increased their admiration for the dash and boldness 
of the instigator. They were such simple, artless, and custom-bound 
bushrangers that they had never before thought of extending their 
habits beyond the running off of live-stock and the shooting of such 
of their acquaintances as ventured to interfere.
   Bud acted "on the level," agreeing to take a subordinate place in 
the gang until Black Eagle should have been given a trial as leader.
   After a great deal of consultation, studying of time-tables, and 
discussion of the country's topography, the time and place for 
carrying out their new enterprise was decided upon. At that time there 
was a feedstuff famine in Mexico and a cattle famine in certain parts 
of the United States, and there was a brisk international trade. Much 
money was being shipped along the railroads that connected the two 
republics. It was agreed that the most promising place for the 
contemplated robbery was at Espina, a little station on the I. and G. 
N., about forty miles north of Laredo. The train stopped there one 
minute; the country around was wild and unsettled; the station 
consisted of but one house in which the agent lived.
   Black Eagle's band set out, riding by night. Arriving in the 
vicinity of Espina they rested their horses all day in a thicket a few 
miles distant. The train was due at Espina at 10.30 P.M. They could 
rob the train and be well over the Mexican border with their booty by 
daylight the next morning.
   To do Black Eagle justice, he exhibited no signs of flinching from 
the responsible honours that had been conferred upon him.
   He assigned his men to their respective posts with discretion, and 
coached them carefully as to their duties. On each side of the track 
four of the band were to lie concealed in the chaparral. Gotch-Ear 
Rodgers was to stick up the station agent. Bronco Charlie was to 
remain with the horses, holding them in readiness. At a spot where it 
was calculated the engine would be when the train stopped, Bud King 
was to lie hidden on one side, Black Eagle himself on the other. The 
two would get the drop on the engineer and fireman, force them to 
descend and proceed to the rear. Then the express car would be looted, 
and the escape made. No one was to move until Black Eagle gave the 
signal by firing his revolver. The plan was perfect.
   At ten minutes to train time every man was at his post, effectually 
concealed by the thick chaparral that grew almost to the rails. The 
night was dark and lowering, with a fine drizzle falling from the 
flying gulf clouds. Black Eagle crouched behind a bush within five 
yards of the track. Two six-shooters were belted around him. 
Occasionally he drew a large black bottle from his pocket and raised 
it to his mouth.
   A star appeared far down the track which soon waxed into the 
headlight of the approaching train. It came on with an increasing 
roar; the engine bore down upon the ambushing desperadoes with a glare 
and a shriek like some avenging monster come to deliver them to 
justice. Black Eagle flattened himself upon the ground. The engine, 
contrary to their calculations, instead of stopping between him and 
Bud King's place of concealment, passed fully forty yards farther 
before it came to a stand.
   The bandit leader rose to his feet and peered around the bush. His 
men all lay quiet, awaiting the signal. Immediately opposite Black 
Eagle was a thing that drew his attention. Instead of being a regular 
passenger train it was a mixed one. Before him stood a box car, the 
door of which, by some means, had been left slightly open. Black Eagle 
went up to it and pushed the door farther open. An odour came forth-a 
damp, rancid, familiar, musty, intoxicating, beloved odour stirring 
strongly at old memories of happy days and travels. Black Eagle 
sniffed at the witching smell as the returned wanderer smells of the 
rose that twines his boyhood's cottage home. Nostalgia seized him. He 
put his hand inside. Excelsior-dry, springy, curly, soft, enticing, 
covered the floor. Outside the drizzle had turned to a chilling rain.
   The train bell clanged. The bandit chief unbuckled his belt, and 
cast it, with its revolvers, upon the ground. His spurs followed 
quickly, and his broad sombrero. Black Eagle was moulting. The train 
started with a rattling jerk. The ex-Terror of the Border scrambled 
into the box car and closed the door. Stretched luxuriously upon the 
excelsior, with the black bottle clasped closely to his breast, his 
eyes closed, and a foolish, happy smile upon his terrible features, 
Chicken Ruggles started upon his return trip.
   Undisturbed, with the band of desperate bandits lying motionless, 
awaiting the signal to attack, the train pulled out from Espina. As 
its speed increased and the black masses of chaparral went whizzing 
past on either side, the express messenger, lighting his pipe, looked 
through his window and remarked feelingly:
   "What a jim-dandy place for a hold-up!"