O. Henry

                         A Ruler of Men


Файл с книжной полки Несененко Алексея
OCR: Несененко Алексей июнь 2002



I WALKED THE STREETS of the City of Insolence, thirsting for the sight 
of a stranger face. For die City is a desert of familiar types as 
thick and alike as the grains in a sandstorm; and you grow to hate 
them as you do a friend who is always by you, or one of your own kin.
   And my desire was granted, for I saw, near a comer of Broadway and 
Twenty-ninth Street, a little flaxen-haired man with a face like a 
scalybark hickory-nut, selling to a fast-gathering crowd a tool that 
omnigeneously proclaimed itself a can-opener, a screwdriver, a button-
hook, a nail-file, a shoe-horn, a watch-guard, a potato-peeler, and an 
ornament to any gentleman's key-ring.
   And then a stall-fed cop shoved himself through the congregation of 
customers. The vendor, plainly used to having his seasons of trade 
thus abruptly curtailed, closed his satchel and supped like a weasel 
through the opposite segment of the circle. The crowd scurried 
aimlessly away like ants from a disturbed crumb. The cop, suddenly 
becoming oblivious of the earth and its inhabitants, stood still, 
swelling his bulk and putting his club through an intricate drill of 
twirls. I hurried after Kansas Bill Bowers, and caught him by an arm.
Without his looking at me or slowing his pace, I found a five-dollar 
bill crumpled neatly into my hand.
   'I wouldn't have thought, Kansas Bill,' I said, 'that you'd hold an 
old friend that cheap.'
   Then he turned his head, and the hickory-nut cracked into a wide 
smile.
   'Give back the money,' said he, 'or I'll have the cop after you for 
false pretences. I thought you was the cop.'
   'I want to talk to you, Bill,' I said. 'When did you leave 
Oklahoma? Where is Reddy McGill now? Why are you selling those 
impossible contraptions on the street? How did your Big Horn gold-mine 
pan out? How did you get so badly sun-burned? What will you drink?'
'A year ago,' answered Kansas Bill systematically. 'Putting up 
windmills in Arizona. For pin money to buy etceteras with. Salted. 
Been down in the tropics. Beer.'
   We forgathered in a propitious place and became Elijahs, while a 
waiter of dark plumage played the raven to perfection. Reminiscence 
needs must be had before I could steer Bill into his epic mood.
'Yes,' said he, 'I mind the time Timoteo's rope broke on that cow's 
horns while the calf was chasing you. You and that cow! I'd never 
forget it.'
   'The tropics,' said I, 'are a broad territory. What part of Cancer 
or Capricorn have you been honouring with a visit?'
   'Down along China or Peru - or maybe the Argentine Confederacy,' 
said Kansas Bill. 'Anyway 'twas among a great race of people, off-
coloured but progressive. I was there three months.'
   'No doubt you are glad to be back among the truly great race,' I 
surmised. 'Especially among New Yorkers, the most progressive and 
independent citizens of any country in the world,' I continued, with 
the fatuity of the provincial who has eaten the Broadway lotus.
   'Do you want to start an argument?' asked Bill.
   'Can there be one?' I answered.
   'Has an Irishman humour, do you think?' asked he.
   'I have an hour or two to spare,' said I, looking at the cafe  
clock.
   'Not that the Americans aren't a great commercial nation,' conceded 
Bill. 'But the fault lay with the people who wrote lies for fiction.'
   'What was this Irishman's name?' I asked.
   'Was that last beer cold enough?' said he.
   'I see there is talk of further outbreaks among the Russian 
peasants,' I remarked.
   'His name was Barney O'Connor,' said Bill.
   Thus, because of our ancient prescience of each other's trail of 
thought, we travelled ambiguously to the point where Kansas Bill's 
story began:
   'I met O'Connor in a boarding-house on the West Side. He invited me 
to his hall-room to have a drink, and we became like a dog and a cat 
that had been raised together. There he sat, a tall, fine, handsome 
man, with his feet against one wall and his back against the other, 
looking over a map. On the bed and sticking three feet out of it was a 
beautiful gold sword with tassels on it and rhinestones in the handle.
   '"What's this?" says I (for by that time we were well acquainted). 
"The annual parade in vilification of the ex-snakes of Ireland? And 
what's the line of march? Up Broadway to Forty-second; thence east to 
McCarthy's cafe; thence -'
   '"Sit down on the wash-stand," says O'Connor, "and listen. And cast 
no perversions on the sword. 'Twas me father's in old Munster. And 
this map, Bowers, is no diagram of a holiday procession. If ye look 
again ye'll see that it's the continent known as South America, 
comprising fourteen green, blue, red, and yellow countries, all crying 
out from time to time to be liberated from the yoke of the oppressor."
   '"I know," says I to O'Connor. "The idea is a literary one. The 
ten-cent magazine stole it from Ridpath's History of the World from 
the Sandstone Period to the Equator. You'll find it in every one of 
'em. It's a continued story of a soldier of fortune, generally named 
O'Keefe, who gets to be dictator while the Spanish-American populace 
cries 'Cospetto!' and other Italian maledictions. I misdoubt if it's 
ever been done. You're not thinking of trying that, are you, Barney?" 
I asks.
   '"Bowers," says he, "you're a man of education and courage."
   '"How can I deny it?" says I. "Education runs in my family; and I 
have acquired courage by a hard struggle with life."
   '"The O'Connors," says he, "are a warlike race. There is me 
father's sword; and here is the map. A life of inaction is not for me. 
The O'Connors were born to rule. Tis a ruler of men I must be."
   '"Barney," I says to him, "why don't you get on the force and 
settle down to a quiet life of carnage and corruption instead of 
roaming off to foreign parts? In what better way can you indulge your 
desire to subdue and maltreat the oppressed?"
   '"Look again at the map," says he, "at the country I have the point 
of me knife on. Tis that one I have selected to aid and overthrow with 
me father's sword."
   '"I see," says I. "It's the green one, and that does credit to your 
patriotism; and it's the smallest one, and that does credit to your 
judgment."
   '"Do ye accuse me of cowardice?" says Barney, turning pink.
   '"No man," says I, "who attacks and confiscates a country single-
handed could be called a coward. The worst you can be charged with is 
plagiarism or imitation. If Anthony Hope and Roosevelt let you get 
away with it, nobody else will have any right to kick."
   '"I'm not joking," says O'Connor. "And I've got $1,500 cash to work 
the scheme with. I've taken a liking to you. Do you want it, or not?"
   '"I'm not working," I told him; "but how is it to be? Do I eat 
during the fomentation of the insurrection, or am I only to be 
Secretary of War after the country is conquered? Is it to be a pay 
envelope or only a portfolio?"
   '"I'll pay all expenses," says O'Connor. "I want a man I can trust. 
If we succeed you may pick out any appointment you want in the gift of 
the government."
   '"All right, then," says I. "You can get me a bunch of draying 
contracts and then a quick-action consignment to a seat on the Supreme 
Court bench so I won't be in line for the presidency. The kind of 
cannon they chasten their presidents with in that country hurt too 
much. You can consider me on the pay-roll."
   'Two weeks afterward O'Connor and me took a steamer for the small, 
green, doomed country. We were three weeks on the trip. O'Connor said 
he had his plans all figured out in advance; but being the commanding 
general, it consorted with his dignity to keep the details concealed 
from his army and cabinet, commonly known as William T. Bowers. Three 
dollars a day was the price for which I joined the cause of liberating 
an undiscovered country from the ills that threatened or sustained it. 
Every Saturday night on the steamer I stood in line at parade rest, 
and O'Connor handed over the twenty-one dollars.
   'The town we landed at was named Guayaquerita, so they told me. 
"Not for me," says I. "It'll be little old Hilldale or Tompkinsville 
or Cherry Tree Corners when I speak of it. It's a clear case where 
spelling reform ought to butt in and disenvowel it."
   'But the town looked fine from the bay when we sailed in. It was 
white, with green ruching and lace ruffles on the skirt when the surf 
slashed up on the sand. It looked as tropical and dolce far ultra as 
the pictures of Lake Ronkonkoma in the brochure of the passenger 
department of the Long Island Railroad.
   'We went through the quarantine and customhouse indignities;
and then O'Connor leads me to a 'dobe house on a street called "The 
Avenue of the Dolorous Butterflies of the Individual and Collective 
Saints." Ten feet wide it was, and knee-deep in alfalfa and cigar 
stumps
   '"Hooligan Alley," says I, re-christening it
   '"Twill be our head-quarters," says O'Connor "My agent here, Don 
Femando Pacheco, secured it for us."
   'So in that house O'Connor and me established the revolutionary 
centre. In the front room we had ostensible things such as fruit, a 
guitar, and a table with a conch shell on it. In the back room 
O'Connor had his desk and a large looking-glass and his sword hid in a 
roll of straw matting. We slept on hammocks that we hung to hooks in 
the wall; and took our meals at the Hotel Ingles, a beanery run on the 
American plan by a German proprietor with Chinese cooking served a la 
Kansas City lunch counter.
   'It seems that O'Connor really did have some sort of system planned 
out beforehand. He wrote plenty of letters; and every day or two some 
native gent would stroll round to head-quarters and be shut up in the 
back room for half an hour with O'Connor and the interpreter. I 
noticed that when they went in they were always smoking eight-inch 
cigars and at peace with the world; but when they came out they would 
be folding up a ten- or twenty-dollar bill and cursing the government 
horribly.
   'One evening after we had been in Guaya - in this town of 
Smellville-by-the-Sea - about a month, and me and O'Connor were 
sitting outside the door helping old tempus fugit with rum and ice and 
limes, I says to him:
   '"If you'll excuse a patriot that don't exactly know what he's 
patronizing, for the question - what is your scheme for subjugating 
this country? Do you intend to plunge it into bloodshed, or do you 
mean to buy its votes peacefully and honourably at the polls?"
   '"Bowers," says he, "ye're a fine little man and I intend to make 
great use of ye after the conflict. But ye do not understand 
statecraft. Already by now we have a network of strategy clutching 
with invisible fingers at the throat of the tyrant Calderas. We have 
agents at work in every town in the republic. The Liberal party is 
bound to win. On our secret lists we have the names of enough 
sympathizers to crush the administration forces at a single blow."
   '"A straw vote," says I, "only shows which way the hot air blows."
   '"Who has accomplished this?" goes on O'Connor. "I have. I have 
directed everything. The time was ripe when we came, so my agents 
inform me. The people are groaning under burdens of taxes and levies. 
Who will be their natural leader when they rise? Could it be anyone 
but meself? 'twas only yesterday that Zaidas, our representative in 
the province of Durasnas, tells me that the people, in secret, already 
call me 'El Library Door,' which is the Spanish manner of saying 'The 
Liberator.' "
   '"Was Zaidas that maroon-coloured old Aztec with a paper collar on 
and unbleached domestic shoes?" I asked.
   '"He was," says O'Connor
   '"I saw him tucking a yellow-back into his vest pocket as he came 
out," says I. "It may be," says I, "that they call you a library door, 
but they treat you more like the side-door of a bank. But let us hope 
for the worst."
   '"It has cost money, of course," says O'Connor; "but we'll have the 
country in our hands inside of a month."
   'In the evenings we walked about in the plaza and listened to the 
band playing and mingled with the populace at its distressing and 
obnoxious pleasures. There were thirteen vehicles belonging to the 
upper classes, mostly rockaways and oldstyle barouches, such as the 
mayor rides in at the unveiling of the new poor-house at 
Milledgeville, Alabama. Round and round the desiccated fountain in the 
middle of the plaza they drove, and lifted their high silk hats to 
their friends. The common people walked around in barefooted bunches, 
puffing stogies that a Pittsburg millionaire wouldn't have chewed for 
a dry smoke on Ladies' Day at his club. And the grandest figure in the 
whole turnout was Bamey O'Connor. Six foot two he stood in his Fifth 
Avenue clothes, with his eagle eye and his black moustache that 
tickled his ears. He was a born dictator and tsar and hero and harrier 
of the human race. It looked to me that all eyes were turned upon 
O'Connor, and that every woman there loved him, and every man feared 
him. Once or twice I looked at him and thought of funnier things that 
had happened than his winning out in his game; and I began to feel 
like a Hidalgo de Officio de Grafto de South America myself. And then 
I would come down again to solid bottom and let my imagination gloat, 
as usual, upon the twenty-one American dollars due me on Saturday 
night.
   '"Take note," says O'Connor to me as thus we walked, "of the mass 
of the people. Observe their oppressed and melancholy air. Can ye not 
see that they are ripe for revolt? Do ye not perceive that they are 
disaffected?"
   "I do not," says I. "Nor disinfected either. I'm beginning to 
understand these people. When they look unhappy they're enjoying 
themselves. When they feel unhappy they go to sleep. They're not the 
kind of people to take an interest in revolutions."
   '"They'll flock to our standard," says O'Connor. "Three thousand 
men in this town alone will spring to arms when the signal is given. I 
am assured of that. But everything is in secret. There is no chance 
for us to fail."
   'On Hooligan Alley, as I prefer to call the street our headquarters 
was on, there was a row of flat 'dobe houses with red tile roofs, some 
straw shacks full of Indians and dogs, and one two-story wooden house 
with balconies a little farther down. That was where General Tumbalo, 
the commandant and commander of the military forces, lived. Right 
across the street was a private residence built like a combination 
bake-oven and folding-bed. One day, O'Connor and me were passing it, 
single file, on the flange they called a sidewalk, when out of the 
window flies a big red rose. O'Connor, who is ahead, picks it up, 
presses it to his fifth rib, and bows to the ground. By Carrambos! 
that man certainly had the Irish drama chaunceyized. I looked around 
expecting to see the little boy and girl in white sateen ready to jump 
on his shoulder while he jolted their spinal columns and ribs together 
through a breakdown, and sang: "Sleep, Little One, Sleep."
   'As I passed the window I glanced inside and caught a glimpse of a 
white dress and a pair of big flashing black eyes and gleaming teeth 
under a dark lace mantilla.
   'When we got back to our house O'Connor began to walk up and down 
the floor and twist his moustache.
   '"Did ye see her eyes, Bowers?" he asks me.
   '"I did," says I, "and I can see more than that. It's all coming 
out according to the story-books. I knew there was something missing. 
'Twas the love interest. What is it that comes in Chapter VII to cheer 
the gallant Irish adventurer? Why, Love, of course -Love that makes 
the hat go around. At last we have the eyes of midnight hue and the 
rose flung from the barred window. Now, what comes next? The 
underground passage - the intercepted letter - the traitor in camp - 
the hero thrown into a dungeon - the mysterious message from the 
senorita - then the outburst - the fighting on the plaza - the -'
   'Don't be a fool," says O'Connor, interrupting. "But that's the 
only woman in the world for me, Bowers. The O'Connors are as quick to 
love as they are to fight. I shall wear that rose over me heart when I 
lead me men into action. For a good battle to be fought there must be 
some woman to give it power.
   '"Every time," I agreed, "if you want to have a good lively scrap. 
There's only one thing bothering me. In the novels the light-haired 
friend of the hero always gets killed. Think 'em all over that you've 
read, and you'll see that I'm right. I think I'll step down to the 
Botica Espanola and lay in a bottle of walnut stain before war is 
declared."
   '"How will I find out her name?" says O'Connor, laying his chin in 
his hand.
   '"Why don't you go across the street and ask her?" says I.
   '"Will you never regard anything in life seriously?" says O'Connor, 
looking down at me like a schoolmaster.
   '"Maybe she meant the rose for me," I said, whistling the Spanish 
fandango.
   'For the first time since I'd known O'Connor, he laughed. He got up 
and roared and clapped his knees, and leaned against the Wall till the 
tiles on the roof clattered to the noise of his lungs. He went into 
the back room and looked at himself in the glass and began and laughed 
all over from the beginning again. Then he looked at me and repeated 
himself. That's why I asked you if you thought an Irishman had any 
humour. He'd been doing farce comedy from the day I saw him without 
knowing it; and the first time he had an idea advanced to him with any 
intelligence he acted in it like two-twelfths of the sextet in a 
"Floradora' road company.
   '"The next afternoon he comes in with a triumphant smile and begin 
to pull something like ticker tape out of his pocket.
"Great!" says I. "This is something like home. How is Amalgamated 
Copper to-day?"
   '"I've got her name," says O'Connor, and he reads off something 
like this: "Dona Isabel Antonia Inez Lolita Can-eras y Buencaminos y 
Monteleon. She lives with her mother," explains O'Connor "Her father 
was killed in the last revolution. She is sure to be in sympathy with 
our cause."
   'And sure enough the next day she flung a little bunch of roses 
clear across the street into our door. O'Connor dived for it and found 
a piece of paper curled around a stem with a line in Spanish on it. He 
dragged the interpreter out of his corner and got him busy. The 
interpreter scratched his head, and gave us as a translation three 
best bets: "Fortune had got a face like the man
fighting"; "Fortune looks like a brave man"; and "Fortune favours the 
brave." We put our money on the last one.
   '"Do ye see?" says O'Connor. "She intends to encourage me sword to 
save her country."
   '"It looks to me like an invitation to supper," says I.
   'So every day this senorita sits behind the barred windows and 
exhausts a conservatory or two, one posy at a time. And O'Connor walks 
like a Dominecker rooster and swells his chest and swears to me he 
will win her by feats of arms and big deeds on the gory field of 
battle.
   'By and by the revolution began to get ripe. One day O'Connor takes 
me into the back room and tells me all.
   '"Bowers," he says, "at twelve o'clock one week from to-day the 
struggle will take place. It has pleased ye to find amusement and 
diversion in this project because ye have not sense enough to perceive 
that it is easily accomplished by a man of courage, intelligence, and 
historical superiority, such as meself. The whole world over," says 
he, "the O'Connors have ruled men, women, and nations. To subdue a 
small and indifferent country like this is a trifle. Ye see what 
little barefooted manikins the men of it are. I could lick four of 'em 
single-handed."
   '"No doubt," says I. "But could you lick six? And suppose they 
hurled an army of seventeen against you?"
   '"Listen," says O'Connor, "to what will occur. At noon next Tuesday 
25,000 patriots will rise up in the towns of the republic. The 
government will be absolutely unprepared. The public buildings will be 
taken, the regular army made prisoners, and the new administration set 
up. In the capital it will not be so easy on account of most of the 
army being stationed there. They will occupy the president's palace 
and the strongly fortified government buildings, and stand a siege. 
But on the very day of the outbreak a body of our troops will begin a 
march to the capital from every town as soon as the local victory has 
been won. The thing is so well planned that it is an impossibility for 
us to fail. I meself will lead the troops from here. The new president 
will be Senor Espadas, now Minister of Finance in the present 
cabinet."
   '"What do you get?" I asked.
   ''Twill be strange," said O'Connor smiling, "if I don't have all 
the jobs handed to me on a silver salver to pick what I choose. I've 
been the brains of the scheme, and when the fighting opens I guess I 
won't be in the rear rank. Who managed it so our troops could get arms 
smuggled into this country? Didn't I arrange it with a New York firm 
before I left there? Our financial agents inform me that 20,000 stands 
of Winchester rifles have been delivered a month ago at a secret place 
up coast and distributed among the towns. I tell you, Bowers, the game 
is already won."
   'Well, that kind of talk kind of shook my disbelief in the 
infallibility of the serious Irish gentleman soldier of fortune. It 
certainly seemed that the patriotic grafters had gone about the thing 
in a business way. I looked upon O'Connor with more respect, and began 
to figure on what kind of uniform I might wear as Secretary of War.
'Tuesday, the day set for the revolution, came around according to 
schedule. O'Connor said that a signal had been agreed upon for the 
uprising. There was an old cannon on the beach near the national 
warehouse. That had been secretly loaded, and promptly at twelve 
o'clock was to be fired off. Immediately the revolutionists would 
seize their concealed arms, attack the comandante's troops in the 
cuartel, and capture the custom-house and all government property and 
supplies.
   'I was nervous all the morning. And about eleven o'clock O'Connor 
became infused with the excitement and martial spirit of murder. He 
geared his father's sword around him, and walked up and down in the 
back room like a lion in the Zoo suffering from corns. I smoked a 
couple of dozen cigars, and decided on yellow stripes down the trouser 
legs of my uniform.
   'At half-past eleven O'Connor asks me to take a short stroll 
through the streets to see if I could notice any signs of the 
uprising. I was back in fifteen minutes.
   '"Did you hear anything?" he asks.
   '"I did," says I. "At first I thought it was drums. But it wasn't; 
it was snoring. Everybody in town's asleep."
   'O'Connor tears out his watch.
   '"Fools?" says he. "They've set the time right at the siesta hour 
when everybody takes a nap. But the cannon will wake 'em up. 
Everything will be all right, depend upon it."
   'Just at twelve o'clock we heard the sound of a cannon -BOOM! - 
shaking the whole town.
   'O'Connor loosens his sword in its scabbard and jumps for the door. 
I went as far as the door and stood in it.
   'People were sticking their heads out of doors and windows. But 
there was one grand sight that made the landscape look tame.
   'General Tumbalo, the comandante, was rolling down the steps of his 
residential dug-out, waving a five-foot sabre in his hand. He wore his 
cocked and plumed hat and his dress-parade coat covered with gold 
braid and buttons. Sky-blue pyjamas, one rubber boot, and one red-
plush slipper completed his make-up.
   'The general had heard the cannon, and he puffed down the sidewalk 
towards the soldiers' barracks as fast as his rudely awakened two 
hundred pounds could travel.
   'O'Connor sees him and lets out a battle-cry and draws his father's 
sword and rushes across the street and tackles the enemy.
   'Right there in the street he and the general gave an exhibition of 
blacksmithing and butchery. Sparks flew from their blades, the general 
roared, and O'Connor gave the slogan of his race and proclivities.
   'Then the general's sabre broke in two; and he took to his ginger-
coloured heels crying out, "Policies," at every jump. O'Connor chased 
him a block, imbued with the sentiment of manslaughter, and slicing 
buttons off the general's coat-tails with the paternal weapon. At the 
comer five bare-footed policemen in cotton undershirts and straw hats 
climbed over O'Connor and subjugated him according to the municipal 
statutes.
   'They brought him past the late revolutionary head-quarters on the 
way to jail. I stood in the door. A policeman had him by each hand and 
foot, and they dragged him on his back through the grass like a 
turtle. Twice they stopped, and the odd policeman took another's place 
while he rolled a cigarette. The great soldier of fortune turned his 
head and looked at me as they passed. I blushed, and lit another 
cigar. The procession passed on, and at ten minutes past twelve 
everybody had gone back to sleep again.
   'In the afternoon the interpreter came around and smiled as he laid 
his hand on the big red jar we usually kept ice-water in.
   '"The ice-man didn't call to-day," says I. "What's the matter with 
everything, Sancho?"
   '"Ah, yes," says the liver-coloured linguist. "They just tell me in 
the town. Verree bad act that Senor O'Connor make fight with General 
Tumbalo. Yes. General Tumbalo great soldier and big mans."
   '"What'U they do to Mr. O'Connor?" I asks.
   '"I talk little while presently with the Juez de la Paz - what you 
call Justice-with-the-peace," says Sancho. "He tell me it verree bad 
crime that one Senor Americano try kill General Tumbalo. He says they 
keep Senior O'Connor in jail six months; then have trial and shoot him 
with guns. Verree sorree."
   '"How about this revolution that was to be pulled off?" I asks.
   '"Oh," says this Sancho, "I think too hot weather for revolution. 
Revolution better in winter-time. Maybe so next winter. Quien sabe?"
   '"But the cannon went off," says I. "The signal was given."
   '"That big sound?" says Sancho, grinning. "The boiler in ice 
factory he blow up - BOOM! Wake everybody up from siesta. Verree 
sorree. No ice. Mucho hot day."
   'About sunset I went over to the jail, and they let me talk to 
O'Connor through the bars.
   '"What's the news, Bowers?" says he. "Have we taken the town? I've 
been expecting a rescue party all the afternoon. I haven't heard any 
firing Has any word been received from the capital?"
   '"Take it easy, Barney," says I. "I think there's been a change of 
plans. There's something more important to talk about. Have you any 
money?"
   '"I have not," says O'Connor. "The last dollar went to pay our 
hotel bill yesterday. Did our troops capture the custom-house? There 
ought to be plenty of government money there."
   '"Segregate your mind from battles," says I. "I've been making 
inquiries. You're to be shot six months from date for assault and 
battery. I'm expecting to receive fifty years at hard labour for 
vagrancy. All they furnish you while you're a prisoner is water. You 
depend on your friends for food. I'll see what I can do."
   'I went away and found a silver Chile dollar in an old vest of 
O'Connor's. I took him some fried fish and rice for his supper. In the 
morning I went down to a lagoon and had a drink of water, and then 
went back to the jail. O'Connor had a porterhouse steak look in his 
eye.
   '"Barney," says I. "I've found a pond full of the finest kind of 
water. It's the grandest, sweetest, purest water in the world. Say the 
word and I'll go fetch you a bucket of it and you can throw this vile 
government stuff out of the window. I'll do anything I can for a 
friend."
   '"Has it come to this?" says O'Connor, raging up and down his cell. 
"Am I to be starved to death and then shot? I'll make those traitors 
feel the weight of an O'Connor's hand when I get out of this." And 
then he comes to the bars and speaks softer. "Has nothing been heard 
from Dona Isabel?" he asks. "Though every one else in the world fail," 
says he, "I trust those eyes of hers. She will find a way to effect my 
release. Do ye think ye could communicate with her? One word from her 
- even a rose would make me sorrow light. But don't let her know 
except with the utmost delicacy, Bowers. These high-bred Castilians 
are sensitive and proud."
   '"Well said, Bamey," says I. "You've given me an idea. I'll report 
later. Something's got to be pulled off quick, or we'll both starve."
   'I walked out and down to Hooligan Alley, and then on the other 
side of the street. As I went past the window of Dona Isabel Antonia 
Concha Regalia, out flies the rose as usual and hits me on the ear.
   'The door was open, and I took off my hat and walked in. It wasn't 
very light inside, but there she sat in a rocking-chair by the window 
smoking a black cheroot. And when I got closer I saw that she was 
about thirty-nine, and had never seen a straight front in her life. I 
sat down on the arm of her chair, and took the cheroot out other mouth 
and stole a kiss.
   '"Hullo, Izzy," I says. "Excuse my unconventionality, but I feel 
like I have known you for a month. Whose Izzy is oo?"
   'The lady ducked her head under her mantilla, and drew in a long 
breath. I thought she was going to scream, but with all that intake of 
air she only came out with: "Me likee Americanos."
   'As soon as she said that, I knew that O'Connor and me would be 
doing things with a knife and fork before the day was over. I drew a 
chair beside her, and inside of half an hour we were engaged. Then I 
took my hat and said I must go out for a while.
   '"You come back?" says Izzy, in alarm.
   '"Me go bring preacher," says I. "Come back twenty minutes. We 
marry now. How you likee?"
   '"Marry to-day?" says Izzy. "Good!"
   'I went down on the beach to the United States consul's shack. He 
was a grizzly man, eighty-two pounds, smoked glasses, five foot 
eleven, pickled. He was playing chess with an india-rubber man in 
white clothes.
   '"Excuse me for interrupting," says I, "but can you tell me how a 
man could get married quick?"
   'The consul gets up and fingers in a pigeonhole.
   '"I believe I had a licence to perform the ceremony myself, a year 
or two go," he said. "I'll look, and -'
   'I caught hold of his arm.
   '"Don't look it up," says I. "Marriage is a lottery, anyway. I'm 
willing to take the risk about the licence if you are."
   'The Consul went back to Hooligan Alley with me. Izzy called her ma 
to come in, but the old lady was picking a chicken in the patio and 
begged to be excused. So we stood up and the consul performed the 
ceremony.
   'That evening Mrs. Bowers cooked a great supper of stewed goat, 
tamales, baked bananas, fricasseed red peppers and coffee. Afterward I 
sat in the rocking-chair by the front window, and she sat on the floor 
plunking at a guitar and happy, as she should be, as Mrs. William T.B.
   'All at once I sprang up in a hurry. I'd forgotten all about 
O'Connor. I asked Izzy to fix up a lot of truck for him to eat. 
   '"That big, oogly man," said Izzy. "But all right - he your 
friend."
   'I pulled a rose out of a bunch in a jar, and took the grub-basket 
around to the jail. O'Connor ate like a wolf. Then he wiped his face 
with a banana peel and said: "Have you heard nothing from Dona Isabel 
yet?"
   '"Hist!" says I, slipping the rose between the bars. "She sends you 
this. She bids you take courage. At nightfall two masked men brought 
it to the ruined chateau in the orange grove. How did you like that 
goat hash, Barney?"
   'O'Connor pressed the rose to his lips.
   '"This is more to me than all the food in the world," says he. "But 
the supper was fine. Where did you raise it?"
   '"I've negotiated a stand-off at a delicatessen hut down-town," I 
tells him. "Rest easy. If there's anything to be done I'll do it."
   'So things went along that way for some weeks. Izzy was a great 
cook; and if she had had a little more poise of character and smoked a 
little better brand of tobacco we might have drifted into some sense 
of responsibility for the honour I had conferred on her. But as time 
went on I began to hunger for the sight of a real lady standing before 
me in a street-car. All I was staying in that land of bilk and money 
for was because I couldn't get away, and I thought it no more than 
decent to stay and see O'Connor shot.
   'One day our old interpreter drops around and after smoking an hour 
says that the judge of the peace sent him to request me to call on 
him. I went to his office in a lemon grove on a hill at the edge of 
the town; and there I had a surprise. I expected to see one of the 
usual cinnamon-coloured natives in congress gaiters and one of" 
Pizzaro's cast-off hats. What I saw was an elegant gentleman of a 
slightly claybank complexion sitting in an upholstered leather chair, 
sipping a high-ball and reading Mrs. Humphry Ward. I had smuggled into 
my brain a few words of Spanish by the help of Izzy, and I began to 
remark in a rich Andalusian brogue:
   '"Buenas dias, senior. Yo tengo - yo tengo -"
   '"Oh, sit down, Mr. Bowers," says he. "I spent eight years in your 
country in colleges and law schools. Let me mix you a high-ball. Lemon 
peel, or not?"
   'Thus we got along. In about half an hour I was beginning to tell 
him about the scandal in our family when Aunt Elvira ran away with a 
Cumberland Presbyterian preacher. Then he says to
me:
   '"I sent for you, Mr. Bowers, to let you know that you can have 
your friend Mr. O'Connor now. Of course we had to make a show of 
punishing him on account of his attack on General Tumbalo. It is 
arranged that he shall be released to-morrow night. You and he will be 
conveyed on board the fruit steamer Voyager, bound for New York, which 
lies in the harbour. Your passage will be arranged for."
   '"One moment, judge," says I; "that revolution -"
   'The judge lays back in his chair and howls.
   '"Why," says he presently, "that was all a little joke fixed up by 
the boys around the court-room, and one or two of our cup-ups, and a 
few clerks in the stores. The town is bursting its sides with 
laughing. The boys made themselves up to be conspirators, and they - 
what you call it? - stick Senor O'Connor for his money. It is very 
funny."
   '"It was," says I. "I saw the joke all along. I'll take another 
high-ball, if your honour don't mind."
   'The next evening just at dark a couple of soldiers brought 
O'Connor down to the beach, where I was waiting under a coco-nut tree.
   '"Hist!" says I in his ear: "Dona Isabel has arranged our escape. 
Not a word!"
   'They rowed us in a boat out to a little steamer that smelled of 
table d'hote salad oil and bone phosphate.
   'The great, mellow, tropical moon was rising as we steamed away. 
O'Connor leaned on the taffrail or rear balcony of the ship and gazed 
silently at Guaya - at Buncoville-on-the-Beach.
   'He had the red rose in his hand.
"She will wait," I heard him say. "Eyes like hers never deceive. But I 
shall see her again. Traitors cannot keep an O'Connor down for ever."
   '"You talk like a sequel," says I. "But in Volume II please omit 
the light-haired friend who totes the grub to the hero in his dungeon 
cell."
   'And thus reminiscing, we came back to New York.'

                    •      •      •      •      •

   There was a little silence broken only by the familiar roar of the 
streets after Kansas Bill Bowers ceased talking.
   'Did O'Connor ever go back?' I asked.
   'He attained his heart's desire,' said Bill. 'Can you walk two 
blocks? I'll show you.'
   He led me eastward and down a flight of stairs that was covered by 
a curious-shaped, glowing, pagoda-like structure. Signs and figures on 
the riled walls and supporting columns attested that we were in the 
Grand Central station of the subway. Hundreds of people were on the 
midway platform.
   An up-town express dashed up and halted. It was crowded. There was 
a rush for it by a still larger crowd.
   Towering above every one there a magnificent, broad-shouldered, 
athletic man leaped into the centre of the struggle. Men and women he 
seized in either hand and hurled them like manikins toward the open 
gates of the train.
   Now and then some passenger with a shred of soul and self-respect 
left to him turned to offer remonstrances; but the blue uniform on die 
towering figure, the fierce and conquering glare of his eye and the 
ready impact of his ham-like hands glued together the lips that would 
have spoken complaint.
   When the train was full, then he exhibited to all who might observe 
and admire his irresistible genius as a ruler of men. With his knees, 
with his elbows, with his shoulders, with his resistless feet he 
shoved, crushed, slammed, heaved, kicked, flung, pounded the overplus 
of passengers aboard. Then with the sounds of its wheels drowned by 
the moans, shrieks, prayers, and curses of its unfortunate crew, the 
express dashed away.
   'That's him. Ain't he a wonder?' said Kansas Bill admiringly. 'That 
tropical country wasn't the place for him. I wish the distinguished 
traveller, writer, war correspondent, and playwright, Richmond Hobson 
Davis, could see him now. O'Connor ought to be dramatized.'