Эл Дженнингс - Through the Shadows with O'Henry

"Then they'll have to get a new man at the pump house," he confided.

This put a crimp in me. I had shot men without any particular grudge, but to murder in cold blood as a matter of business—I'd have given anything on God's green earth to be off the job.

"Who's got a match?" Jake chirped as merrily as though he sat in his own dining-room.

"For God's sake, you're not going to strike a match here, are you?" Even the hoarse whisper seemed to boom through the silence. Jake struck the match, covering the light with his coat. He took out his watch. It was just 11:10. Fifteen minutes and the train would roll in.

The massive iron bridge all but crashed to pieces as I put a light foot on its beams. The tall girders heaved together. In a panic, I lost my footing and half slipped through the trestle. And} scooped his hand down and grabbed me up as though I were a kitten.

Our plan was to stop the train on the middle of the bridge to prevent the passengers from getting out. We would stall these cars on the trestle; the express would halt at the tank. We could rifle it and make a getaway before any alarm could be sent.

Andy gave the orders.

"Bob, go bring the old man down and drag a red light along.

"Jake, you and Bill get on that side—Al and I will take the right. We need all the men tonight."

As Bob sauntered off, I wondered if I would ever see him again. He came back, chugging the old man in the back with his six-shooter and ribbing him as he came.

"Don't fall on this gun, Bub, or someone will do a slow walk tomorrow." The old fellow was chattering with fear.

"Be easy, lad; be easy, be easy," he kept repeating like a magpie. "I ain't a-going to kick a ruckus; be easy."

Suddenly there came a rumbling and a singing of the rails. Andy and I flopped to our sides. A light like a great eye flashed through the timber. The engine chugged viciously, heaved, whistled for the tank and stopped.

Stopped of its own accord for water before it even got to the bridge ! I got ringy from head to foot and was rolling in the grass when a shot banged out and a man swinging a light jumped off the train. It was the conductor. He dashed right past me. I never thought to stop him. Andy ran past and fired. I came, too, then and began running and yelling up and down the tracks. Bill and Jake were firing and hollering on the other side of the train like an army of maniacs.

"Keep it up ; that's it---" Andy yelled to me.

I did. Two or three passengers started to the steps. I fired in the air. They ducked. The fun was getting hot and furious. I was as happy as a drunkard.

And then the engine began to heave and the train pulled out. I was afraid of nothing. I wanted to run after it and kick it good-bye. I felt like bellowing. I wanted everyone to know I had stuck up a train and done it wonderfully.

The hush seemed to swallow us up. Out of the darkness I could feel Andy and Bob coming toward us. They didn't say a word. We started back quietly. I began to wonder what it was all about.

"Didn't get a bean?" I ventured. Andy caught my arm.

"Hell, yes, we went into the express," he said. "We got a little bundle."

I didn't even know they had gone into the express. I didn't know they had taken a cent. I was so caught up in a frenzy of excitement and suspense, I hadn't an inkling of Andy's maneuvers.

He had ordered the engineer out. Bob had cornered the express messenger. The two were as mild as lambs. They did more than they were told. The messenger opened up the safe and handed over the winnings.

I asked no more. I wanted to feel like an oldtimer. But I went across that bridge as though my feet were winged. I didn't fall through the trestle this time. The girders didn't cram about me and I never noticed whether the water was black or yellow. I was filled with a thrill of great achievement.

A few shots had been fired in the air, but not a man had been hurt, not a blow struck and here we were galloping back with a bundle of boodle in our slickers. The whole job had taken little more than half an hour. We struck into the timber of our encampment well before daylight.

The boys flopped down on the grass. Jake and I stirred up a fire and put on a pot of coffee. I was obsessed with curiosity. I wanted to know what we had got—if it had been worth our while. Jake talked and talked. He didn't say one word about the stickup. He chewed on about old times on the Red Fork, about his kid days, about every fool thing but the holdup. I was bitten with eagerness.

Nobody else seemed worried about the profits. They gulped down coffee and stripped off meat as though eating were the one business of life. I began to fear that the reckoning would be postponed until the next day. Andy stretched himself, yawned and leisurely pointed to the horses.

"Bill, go over to my saddle-bag," he said, at last. "We might as well split this now."

I started up, knocking over the coffee pot. I had an idea it would take two men to carry the boodle. Andy grinned and rubbed his chin on his shoulder. No kid opening a Christmas package ever felt a happier shiver of excitement than I when that bundle was called for.

We were lying around the fire. Its flicker in the gray darkness caught the faces of the men in a ruddy glow. There were two packages. Both were small. Andy took one, opened it and emptied a lot of cheap jewelry into his hat.

Little blue and red stones flashed gold necklaces glinted; ponderous watches ticked almost as loud as alarms. I lay there fascinated as though the jewels of an enchanted treasure chest were sparkling in the firelight.

Andy lumped them into five piles, opened the other package and counted out $6,000 in currency. I felt a chill of disappointment; $600,000 would have been closer to my expectations.

To a copper, the pile was divided. Each man got $1,200 and a handful of trinkets. I jammed these spoils into my pocket with a rapture no attorney's fee had ever given me. I had earned as much in half an hour of gripping excitement as a year's labor as county attorney had given me!

Years later, when I was in the Ohio Penitentiary and O. Henry had been released and was struggling for success in New York, I wrote him the details of this holdup and added a lot of incidents from other jobs. I wanted to write a short story about it.

O. Henry was Bill Porter in those days. When he left the penitentiary he slammed the door on his past. He went to New York burning with the shame of his imprisonment and determined to hide his identity behind the name of O. Henry. Billy Raidler, a fellow convict, and I were about the only ones who knew him as an ex-con. The three of us were pals in the pen. Raidler was despondent a typical jailbird pessimist. In every letter Porter wrote he urged me to stick by Billy, to remind him that two people in the world believed in him.

In answer to my letter he sent me detailed instructions. He told me just how to write the "Holdup." I did the best I could and sent the manuscript to him. He waved the O. Henry wand over it, turned it into a real story and sold it to Everybody's. It was one of his first successes. We went 50-50 on the profits.

By the time that story was written I had learned that the drawbacks of the game outweigh a thousand to one the thrills. That first stickup was pulled off too successfully. It made me cocksure.

I had been forced into outlawry by the unwarranted attack at the Arbeka store. I knew the Southwest well enough to see that I would be railroaded to the penitentiary on the word of the marshals, as scores had been before. I went into the game unwillingly and was immediately captivated by its intensity—its apparent security. Revenge gave place to recklessness.

Not a rumor of the holdup reached the ranch. We lay around for days. Andy went off on his own hook. Bill slipped out a week later. Jake, Bob and I went up to the ranch house. A month had passed. We were not suspected. We decided to pull off another wad.