О. Генри - Short Stories / Рассказы

“Why, no,” said I, “I am no surgeon.”

“Pardon me,” said Judson Tate, “but every man should know enough of anatomy and therapeutics to safeguard his own health. A sudden cold may set up capillary bronchitis or inflammation of the pulmonary vesicles, which may result in a serious affection of the vocal organs.”

“Perhaps so,” said I, with some impatience; “but that is neither here nor there. Speaking of the strange manifestations of the affection of women, I – ”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted Judson Tate; “they have peculiar ways. But, as I was going to tell you: when I went back to Oratama I found out from Manuel Iquito what was in that mixture he gave me for my lost voice. I told you how quick it cured me. He made that stuff from the chuchula plant. Now, look here.”

Judson Tate drew an oblong, white pasteboard box from his pocket.

“For any cough,” he said, “or cold, or hoarseness, or bronchial affection whatsoever, I have here the greatest remedy in the world. You see the formula, printed on the box. Each tablet contains licorice, 2 grains; balsam tolu, 110 grain; oil of anise, 120 minim; oil of tar, 160 minim; oleo-resin of cubebs, 1100 minim; fluid extract of chuchula, 110 minim.

“I am in New York,” went on Judson Tate, “for the purpose of organizing a company to market the greatest remedy for throat affections ever discovered. At present I am introducing the lozenges in a small way. I have here a box containing four dozen, which I am selling for the small sum of fifty cents. If you are suffering – ”

I got up and went away without a word. I walked slowly up to the little park near my hotel, leaving Judson Tate alone with his conscience. My feelings were lacerated. He had poured gently upon me a story that I might have used. There was a little of the breath of life in it, and some of the synthetic atmosphere that passes, when cunningly tinkered, in the marts. And, at the last it had proven to be a commercial pill, deftly coated with the sugar of fiction. The worst of it was that I could not offer it for sale. Advertising departments and counting-rooms look down upon me. And it would never do for the literary. Therefore I sat upon a bench with other disappointed ones until my eyelids drooped.

I went to my room, and, as my custom is, read for an hour stories in my favourite magazines. This was to get my mind back to art again.

And as I read each story, I threw the magazines sadly and hopelessly, one by one, upon the floor. Each author, without one exception to bring balm to my heart, wrote liltingly and sprightly a story of some particular make of motor-car that seemed to control the sparking plug of his genius.

And when the last one was hurled from me I took heart.

“If readers can swallow so many proprietary automobiles,” I said to myself, “they ought not to strain at one of Tate’s Compound Magic Chuchula Bronchial Lozenges.”

And so if you see this story in print you will understand that business is business, and that if Art gets very far ahead of Commerce, she will have to get up and hustle.

I may as well add, to make a clean job of it, that you can’t buy the chuchula plant in the drug stores.

A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat – seamy on both sides.

“Ain’t seen you in about four years, Ham,” said the seedy man. “Which way you been travelling?”

“Texas,” said the red-faced man. “It was too cold in Alaska for me. And I found it warm in Texas. I’ll tell you about one hot spell I went through there.

“One morning I steps off the International at a water-tank and lets it go on without me. ’Twas a ranch country, and fuller of spite-houses than New York City. Only out there they build’em twenty miles away so you can’t smell what they’ve got for dinner, instead of running’em up two inches from their neighbors’ windows.

“There wasn’t any roads in sight, so I footed it ’cross country. The grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a peach orchard. It was so much like a gentleman’s private estate that every minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite you. But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a ranch-house. It was a little one, about as big as an elevated-railroad station.

“There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and a pink handkerchief around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front of the door.

“ ‘Greetings,’ says I. ‘Any refreshment, welcome, emoluments, or even work for a comparative stranger?’

“ ‘Oh, come in,’ says he, in a refined tone. ‘Sit down on that stool, please. I didn’t hear your horse coming.’

“ ‘He isn’t near enough yet,’ says I. ‘I walked. I don’t want to be a burden, but I wonder if you have three or four gallons of water handy.’

“ ‘You do look pretty dusty,’ says he; ‘but our bathing arrangements – ’

“ ‘It’s a drink I want,’ says I. ‘Never mind the dust that’s on the outside.’

“He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging up, and then goes on:

“ ‘Do you want work?’

“ ‘For a time,’ says I. ‘This is a rather quiet section of the country, isn’t it?’

“ ‘It is,’ says he. ‘Sometimes – so I have been told – one sees no human being pass for weeks at a time. I’ve been here only a month. I bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.’

“ ‘It suits me,’ says I. ‘Quiet and retirement are good for a man sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.’

“ ‘Can you herd sheep?’ asks the little ranch-man.

“ ‘Do you mean have I heard sheep?’ says I.

“ ‘Can you herd’em – take charge of a flock of ’em?’ says he.

“ ‘Oh,’ says I, ‘now I understand. You mean chase ’em around and bark at’em like collie dogs. Well, I might,’ says I. ‘I’ve never exactly done any sheep-herding, but I’ve often seen’em from car windows masticating daisies, and they don’t look dangerous.’

“ ‘I’m short a herder,’ says the ranchman. ‘You never can depend on the Mexicans. I’ve only got two flocks. You may take out my bunch of muttons – there are only eight hundred of ’em – in the morning, if you like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations furnished. You camp in a tent on the prairie with your sheep. You do your own cooking, but wood and water are brought to your camp. It’s an easy job.’

“ ‘I’m on,’ says I. ‘I’ll take the job even if I have to garland my brow and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe like the shepherds do in pictures.’

“So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let’em graze on a little hillside on the prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions about not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving’em down to a water-hole to drink at noon.

“ ‘I’ll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the buckboard before night,’ says he.

“ ‘Fine,’ says I. ‘And don’t forget the rations. Nor the camping outfit. And be sure to bring the tent. Your name’s Zollicoffer, ain’t it?’

“ ‘My name,’ says he, ‘is Henry Ogden.’