O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 Part 25

"And he began to go over the inside of the shed. He searched it like a man searching a box for a jewel. He moved the pieces of old castings and he literally fingered the shed from end to end. He would have found a bird's egg.

"Finally he stopped and stood with hand spread out over his mouth. And I selected this critical moment to touch the powder off under his game.

"'Suppose,' I said, 'that this man with the heavy load wished to mislead us; suppose that instead of bringing something here he took one of these old castings away?'

"The hobo looked at me without changing his position.

"'How could he, Governor; he was pointin' this way with the load?'

"'By walking backward,' I said. For it had occurred to me that perhaps the creature had manufactured this evidence for the occasion, and I wished to test the theory."

Walker went on in his slow, even voice:

"The test produced more action than I expected. The hobo dived out through the door. I followed to see him disappear. But he was not in flight; he was squatting down over the foot prints. And a moment later he rocked back on his haunches with a little exultant yelp.

"'Dope's wrong, Governor,' he said; 'he was sure comin' this way.' Then he explained: 'If a man's walkin' forward in sand or mud or snow the toe of his shoe flirts out a little of it, an' if he's walkin' backward his heel flirts it out.'

"At this point I began to have some respect for the creature's ability.

He got up and came back into the shed. And there he stood, in his old position, with his fingers over his mouth, looking round at the empty shed, in which, as I have said, one could not have concealed a bird's egg.

"I watched him without offering any suggestion, for my interest in the thing had awakened and was curious to see what he would do. He stood perfectly motionless for about a minute; and then suddenly he snapped his fingers and the light came into his face.

"'I got it, Governor!' Then he came over to where I stood. 'Gimme a quarter to get a bucket'

"I gave him the coin, for I was now profoundly puzzled, and he went out.

He was gone perhaps twenty minutes, and when he came in he had a bucket of water. But he had evidently been thinking on the way, for he set the bucket down carefully, wiped his hands on his canvas breeches, and began to speak, with a little apologetic whimper in his voice.

"'Now look here, Governor,' he said, 'I'm a-goin' to talk turkey; do I get the five thousand if I find this stuff?'

"'Surely,' I answered him.

"'An' there'll be no monkey'n', Governor; you'll take me down to a bank yourself an' put the money in my hand?'

"'I promise you that,' I a.s.sured him.

"But he was not entirely quiet in his mind about it. He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, and his soft rubber nose worked.

"'Now, Governor,' he said, 'I'm leery about jokers--I gotta be. I don't want any string to this money. If I get it I want to go and blow it in.

I don't want you to hand me the roll an' then start any reformin'

stunt--a-holdin' of it in trust an' a probation officer a-p.u.s.s.y-footin'

me, or any funny business. I want the wad an' a clear road to the bright lights with no word pa.s.sed along to pinch me. Do I git it?'

"'It's a trade!" I said.

"'O.K.,' he answered, and he took up the bucket. He began at the door and poured the water carefully on the hard tramped earth. When the bucket was empty he brought another and another. Finally about midway of the floor s.p.a.ce he stopped.

"'Here it is!' he said.

"I was following beside him, but I saw nothing to justify his words.

"Why do you think the plates are buried here?' I said.

"'Look at the air bubbles comin' up, Governor,' he answered."

Walker stopped, then he added:

"It's a thing which I did not know until that moment, but it's the truth. If hard-packed earth is dug up and repacked air gets into it, and if one pours water on the place air bubbles will come up."

He did not go on, and I flung the big query of his story at him.

"And you found the plates there?"

"Yes," he replied, "in the false bottom of an old steamer trunk."

"And the hobo got the money?"

"Certainly," he answered. "I put it into his hand, and let him go with it, as I promised."

Again he was silent, and I turned toward him in astonishment.

"Then," I said, "why did you begin this story by saying the hobo faked you? I don't see the fake; he found the plates and he was ent.i.tled to the reward."

Walker put his hand into his pocket, took out a leather case, selected a paper from among its contents and handed it to me. "I didn't see the fake either," he said, "until I got this letter."

I unfolded the letter carefully. It was neatly written in a hand like copper plate and dated from Buenos Aires:

_Dear Colonel Walker_: When I discovered that you were planting an agent on every ship I had to abandon the plates and try for the reward. Thank you for the five thousand; it covered expenses. Very sincerely yours,

D. MULEHAUS.

THE BLOOD OF THE DRAGON

BY THOMAS GRANT SPRINGER

From _Live Stories_

Kan Wong, the sampan boatman, sat in the bow of his tiny craft, looking with dream-misted eyes upon the oily, yellow flood of the Yangtze River.

Far across on the opposite sh.o.r.e, blurred by the mist that the alchemy of the setting sun trans.m.u.ted from miasmic vapour to a veil of gold, rose the purple-shadowed, stone-tumbled ruins of Hang Gow, ruins that had been a proud, walled city in the days before the Tai-ping Rebellion.

Viewing its slowly dimming powers as they sank into the fading gold of the mist that the coming night thickened and darkened as it wiped out the light with a damp hand, Kan Wong dreamed over the stories that his father's father--now revered dust somewhere off toward the hills that dimly met the melting sky line--had told him of that ruined city, wherein he, Kan Wong, had not Fate made men mad, would now be ruling a lordly household, even wearing the peac.o.c.k feather and embroidered jacket that were his by right of the Dragon's blood, that blood now hidden under the sun-browned skin of a river coolie. Kan Wong stuffed fine-cut into his bra.s.s-bowled pipe and struck a spark from his tinder box. Through his wide nostrils twin streamers of smoke writhed out, twisting fantastically together and mixing slowly with the rising river mist. His pipe became a wand of dreams summoning the genii of glorious memory. The blood of the Dragon in his veins quickened from the lethargy to which drudgery had cooled it, and raced hotly as he thought of the battle past of his forefathers. Off Somewhere along the river's winding length, where it crawled slowly to the sea, lay the great coast cities.

The lazy ripples, light-tipped, beckoned with luring fingers. There was naught to stay him. His sampan was his home and movable, therefore the morrow would see him turning its bow downstream to seek that strange city where he had heard, dwelt many Foreign Devils who now and then scattered wealth with a prodigal hand.

In that pale hour when the mist, not yet dissipated by the rising sun, lay in a cold, silver veil upon the night-chilled water, he pushed out from the sh.o.r.e and pointed the sampan's prow downstream. Days it took him to reach salt water. He loitered for light cargoes at village edges, or picked up the price of his daily rice at odd tasks ash.o.r.e, but always, were it day or night for travel, his tiny craft bore surely seaward. Mile after slow mile dropped behind him, like the praying beads of a lama's chain, but at last the river salted slightly, and his tiny craft was lifted by the slow swell of the sea's hand reaching for inland.

The river became more populous. The crowding sampans, houseboats, and junks stretched far out into its oily, oozy flow, making a floating city as he neared the congested life of the coast, where the ever-increasing population failed to find ground s.p.a.ce in its maggoty swarming. As the stream widened until the farther bank disappeared in the artificial mist of rising smoke and man-stirred dust, the Foreign Devils' fire junks appeared, majestically steaming up and down--swift swans that scorned the logy, lumbering native craft, the mat sails and toiling sweeps of which made them appear motionless by comparison. A day or two of this and then the coast, with Shanghai sprawling upon the bank, writhing with life, odoriferous, noisy, perpetually awake.