O. Henry

              A Technical Error


Файл с книжной полки Несененко Алексея


I never cared especially for feuds, believing them
to be even more overrated products of our country than
grapefruit, scrapple, or honeymoons.  Nevertheless, if
I may be allowed, I will tell you of an Indian Territory
feud of which I was press-agent, camp-follower, and
inaccessory during the fact.

I was on a visit to Sam Durkee's ranch, where I had a
great time falling off unmanicured ponies and waving
my bare hand at the lower jaws of wolves about two
miles away.  Sam was a hardened person of about twenty-
five, with a reputation for going home in the dark with
perfect equanimity, though often with reluctance.

Over in the Creek Nation was a family bearing the
name of Tatum.  I was told that the Durkees and Tatums
had been feuding for years.  Several of each family had
bitten the grass, and it was expected that more Nebuchad-
nezzars would follow.  A younger generation of each family
was growing up, and the grass was keeping pace with them.
But I gathered that they had fought fairly; that they had
not lain in cornfields and aimed at the division of their
enemies' suspenders in the back -- partly, perhaps,
because there were no cornfields, and nobody wore more
than one suspender.  Nor had any woman or child of
either house ever been harmed.  In those days -- and
you will find it so yet -- their women were safe.

Sam Durkee had a girl.  (If it were an all-fiction
magazine that I expect to sell this story to, I should say,
"Mr. Durkee rejoiced in a fiancйe.")  Her name was
Ella Baynes.  They appeared to be devoted to each
other, and to have perfect confidence in each other, as all
couples do who are and have or aren't and haven't.  She
was tolerably pretty, with a heavy mass of brown hair
that helped her along.  He introduced me to her, which
seemed not to lessen her preference for him; so I reasoned
that they were surely soul-mates.

Miss Baynes lived in Kingfisher, twenty miles from
the ranch.  Sam lived on a gallop between the two places.

One day there came to Kingfisher a courageous young
man, rather small, with smooth face and regular features.
He made many inquiries about the business of the town,
and especially of the inhabitants cognominally.  He
said he was from Muscogee, and he looked it, with his
yellow shoes and crocheted four-in-hand.  I met him
once when I rode in for the mail.  He said his name was
Beverly Travers, which seemed rather improbable.

There were active times on the ranch, just then, and
Sam was too busy to go to town often.  As an incom-
petent and generally worthless guest, it devolved upon
me to ride in for little things such as post cards, barrels
of flour, baking-powder, smoking-tobacco, and -- letters
from Ella.

One day, when I was messenger for half a gross of
cigarette papers and a couple of wagon tires, I saw the
alleged Beverly Travers in a yellow-wheeled buggy with
Ella Baynes, driving about town as ostentatiously as the
black, waxy mud would permit.  I knew that this infor-
mation would bring no balm of Gilead to Sam's soul, so
I refrained from including it in the news of the city that
I retailed on my return.  But on the next afternoon an
elongated ex-cowboy of the name of Simmons, an old-
time pal of Sam's, who kept a feed store in Kingfisher,
rode out to the ranch and rolled and burned many cigar-
ettes before he would talk.  When he did make oration,
his words were these:

"Say, Sam, there's been a description of a galoot
miscallin' himself Bevel-edged Travels impairing the
atmospheric air of Kingfisher for the past two weeks.
You know who he was?  He was not otherwise than
Ben Tatum, from the Creek Nation, son of old Gopher
Tatum that your Uncle Newt shot last February.  You
know what he done this morning?  He killed your brother
Lester -- shot him in the co't-house yard."

I wondered if Sam had heard.  He pulled a twig from
a mesquite bush, chewed it gravely, and said:

"He did, did he?  He killed Lester?"

"The same," said Simmons.  "And he did more.
He run away with your girl, the same as to say Miss Ella
Baynes.  I thought you might like to know, so I rode
out to impart the information."

"I am much obliged, Jim," said Sam, taking the
chewed twig from his mouth.  "Yes, I'm glad you rode
Out. Yes, I'm right glad."

"Well, I'll be ridin' back, I reckon.  That boy I left
in the feed store don't know hay from oats.  He shot
Lester in the back."

"Shot him in the back?"

"Yes, while he was hitchin' his hoss."

"I'm much obliged, Jim."

"I kind of thought you'd like to know as soon as you
could."

"Come in and have some coffee before you ride back,
Jim?"

"Why, no, I reckon not; I must get back to the
store."

"And you say -- "

"Yes, Sam.  Everybody seen 'em drive away together
in a buckboard, with a big bundle, like clothes, tied up
in the back of it.  He was drivin' the team he brought
over with him from Muscogee.  They'll be hard to over-
take right away."

"And which -- "

"I was goin' on to tell you.  They left on the Guthrie
road; but there's no tellin' which forks they'll take --
you know that."

"All right, Jim; much obliged."

"You're welcome, Sam."

Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony
with both heels.  Twenty yards away he reined up and
called back:

"You don't want no -- assistance, as you might say?"

"Not any, thanks."

"I didn't think you would.  Well, so long!"

Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocket-knife
and scraped a dried piece of mud from his left boot.  I
thought at first he was going to swear a vendetta on the
blade of it, or recite "The Gipsy's Curse."  The few 
feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened that 
way.  This one seemed to be presented with a new treat-
ment.  Thus offered on the stage, it would have been
hissed off, and one of Belasco's thrilling melodramas
demanded instead.

"I wonder," said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful
expression, "if the cook has any cold beans left over!"

He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he
had some, ordered him to heat up the pot and make some
strong coffee.  Then we went into Sam's private room,
where he slept, and kept his armoury, dogs, and the sad-
dles of his favourite mounts.  He took three or four six-
shooters out of a bookcase and began to look them over,
whistling "The Cowboy's Lament" abstractedly.  After-
ward he ordered the two best horses on the ranch
saddled and tied to the hitching-post.

Now, in the feud business, in all sections of the country,
I have observed that in one particular there is a delicate
but strict etiquette belonging.  You must not mention
the word or refer to the subject in the presence of a feudist.
It would be more reprehensible than commenting upon
the mole on the chin of your rich aunt.  I found, later on,
that there is another unwritten rule, but I think that
belongs solely to the West.

It yet lacked two hours to supper-time; but in twenty
minutes Sam and I were plunging deep into the reheated
beans, hot coffee, and cold beef.

Nothing like a good meal before a long ride," said
Sam.  "Eat hearty."

I had a sudden suspicion.

"Why did you have two horses saddled?"  I asked.

"One, two -- one, two," said Sam.  "You can count,
can't you?"

His mathematics carried with it a momentary qualm
and a lesson.  The thought had not occurred to him that
the thought could possibly occur to me not to ride at
his side on that red road to revenge and justice.  It was
the higher calculus.  I was booked for the trail.  I began
to eat more beans.

In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward.
Our horses were Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the
mesquite grass of the west.  Ben Tatum's steeds may
have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he had
heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of
ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt
that retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of
his dapper nags.

I knew that Ben Tatum's card to play was flight --
flight until he came within the safer territory of his own
henchmen and supporters.  He knew that the man pur-
suing him would follow the trail to any end where it
might lead.

During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain,
of the price of beef, and of the musical glasses.  You
would have thought he had never had a brother or a
sweetheart or an enemy on earth.  There are some sub-
jects too big even for the words in the "Unabridged."
Knowing this phase of the feud code, but not having
practised it sufficiently, I overdid the thing by telling some
slightly funny anecdotes.  Sam laughed at exactly the
right place -- laughed with his mouth.  When I caught
sight of his mouth, I wished I had been blessed with
enough sense of humour to have suppressed those
anecdotes.

Our first sight of them we had in Guthrie.  Tired and
hungry, we stumbled, unwashed, into a little yellow-pine
hotel and sat at a table.  In the opposite corner we saw
the fugitives.  They were bent upon their meal, but
looked around at times uneasily.

The girl was dressed in brown - one of these smooth,
half-shiny, silky-looking affairs with lace collar and cuffs,
and what I believe they call an accordion-plaited skirt.
She wore a thick brown veil down to her nose, and a
broad-brimmed straw hat with some kind of feathers
adorning it.  The man wore plain, dark clothes, and his
hair was trimmed very short.  He was such a man as you
might see anywhere.

There they were -- the murderer and the woman he
had stolen.  There we were -- the rightful avenger,
according to the code, and the supernumerary who writes
these words.

For one time, at least, in the heart of the supernumerary
there rose the killing instinct.  For one moment he joined
the force of combatants -- orally.

"What are you waiting for, Sam?"  I said in a whisper.
"Let him have it now!"

Sam gave a melancholy sigh.

"You don't understand; but he does," he said.  "He
knows.  Mr. Tenderfoot, there's a rule out here among
white men in the Nation that you can't shoot a man when
he's with a woman.  I never knew it to be broke yet.
You can't do it.  You've got to get him in a gang of men
or by himself.  That's why.  He knows it, too.  We
all know.  So, that's Mr. Ben Tatum!  One of the
'pretty men'!  I'll cut him out of the herd before they
leave the hotel, and regulate his account!"

After supper the flying pair disappeared quickly-
Although Sam haunted lobby and stairway and halls half
the night, in some mysterious way the fugitives eluded
him; and in the morning the veiled lady in the brown
dress with the accordion-plaited skirt and the dapper
young man with the close-clipped hair, and the buckboard
with the prancing nags, were gone.

It is a monotonous story, that of the ride; so it shall be
curtailed.  Once again we overtook them on a road.  We
were about fifty yards behind.  They turned in the
buckboard and looked at us; then drove on without
whipping up their horses.  Their safety no longer lay
in speed.  Ben Tatum knew.  He knew that the only
rock of safety left to him was the code.  There is no
doubt that, had he been alone, the matter would have been
settled quickly with Sam Durkee in the usual way;
but he had something at his side that kept still the
trigger-finger of both.  It seemed likely that he was
no coward.

So, you may perceive that woman, on occasions, may
postpone instead of precipitating conflict between man
and man.  But not willingly or consciously.  She is
oblivious of codes.

Five miles farther, we came upon the future great
Western city of Chandler.  The horses of pursuers and
pursued were starved and weary.  There was one hotel
that offered danger to man and entertainment to beast;
so the four of us met again in the dining room at the
ringing of a bell so resonant and large that it had cracked
the welkin long ago.  The dining room was not as large
as the one at Guthrie.

Just as we were eating apple pie -- how Ben Davises
and tragedy impinge upon each other!  -- I noticed Sam
looking with keen intentness at our quarry where they
were seated at a table across the room.  The girl still
wore the brown dress with lace collar and cuffs, and the
veil drawn down to her nose.  The man bent over his
plate, with his close cropped head held low.

"There's a code," I heard Sam say, either to me or to
himself, "that won't let you shoot a man in the company
of a woman; but, by thunder, there ain't one to keep you
from killing a woman in the company of a man!"

And, quicker than my mind could follow his argument,
he whipped a Colt's automatic from under his left arm
and pumped six bullets into the body that the brown
dress covered -- the brown dress with the lace collar and
cuffs and the accordion-plaited skirt.

The young person in the dark sack suit, from whose
head and from whose life a woman's glory had been
clipped, laid her head on her arms stretched upon the
table; while people came running to raise Ben Tatum
from the floor in his feminine masquerade that had given
Sam the opportunity to set aside, technically, the obliga-
tions of the code.