The Complete Short Stories. O. Hooper Henry

hurriedly secures his hat, and the two leave the studio together.

      The Writing on the Sands

      SCENE — The Beach at Nice. A woman, beautiful, still young, exquisitely clothed, complacent, poised, reclines near the water, idly scrawling letters in the sand with the staff of her silken parasol. The beauty of her face is audacious; her languid pose is one that you feel to be impermanent — you wait, expectant, for her to spring or glide or crawl, like a panther that has unaccountably become stock-still. She idly scrawls in the sand; and the word that she always writes is “Isabel.” A man sits a few yards away. You can see that they are companions, even if no longer comrades. His face is dark and smooth, and almost inscrutable — but not quite. The two speak little together. The man also scratches on the sand with his cane. And the word that he writes is “Anchuria.” And then he looks out where the Mediterranean and the sky intermingle, with death in his gaze.

      The Wilderness and Thou

      SCENE — The Borders of a Gentleman’s Estate in a Tropical Land. An old Indian, with a mahogany-coloured face, is trimming the grass on a grave by a mangrove swamp. Presently he rises to his feet and walks slowly toward a grove that is shaded by the gathering, brief twilight. In the edge of the grove stand a man who is stalwart, with a kind and courteous air, and a woman of a serene and clear-cut loveliness. When the old Indian comes up to them the man drops money in his hand. The grave-tender, with the stolid pride of his race, takes it as his due, and goes his way. The two in the edge of the grove turn back along the dim pathway, and walk close, close — for, after all, what is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

       CURTAIN

      Heart Of The West

       Table of Contents

       Hearts And Crosses

       The Ransom Of Mack

       Telemachus, Friend

       The Handbook Of Hymen

       The Pimienta Pancakes

       Seats Of The Haughty

       Hygeia At The Solito

       An Afternoon Miracle

       The Higher Abdication

       Cupid A La Carte

       The Caballero’s Way

       The Sphinx Apple

       The Missing Chord

       A Call Loan

       The Princess And The Puma

       The Indian Summer Of Dry Valley Johnson

       Christmas By Injunction

       A Chaparral Prince

       The Reformation Of Calliope

      Hearts And Crosses

       Table of Contents

      Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went for anything he usually — but this is not Baldy’s story. He poured out a third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second. Baldy was in consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire.

      “I’d be king if I was you,” said Baldy, so positively that his holster creaked and his spurs rattled.

      Webb Yeager pushed back his flat-brimmed Stetson, and made further disorder in his straw-coloured hair. The tonsorial recourse being without avail, he followed the liquid example of the more resourceful Baldy.

      “If a man marries a queen, it oughtn’t to make him a two-spot,” declared Webb, epitomising his grievances.

      “Sure not,” said Baldy, sympathetic, still thirsty, and genuinely solicitous concerning the relative value of the cards. “By rights you’re a king. If I was you, I’d call for a new deal. The cards have been stacked on you — I’ll tell you what you are, Webb Yeager.”

      “What?” asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale-blue eyes.

      “You’re a prince-consort.”

      “Go easy,” said Webb. “I never blackguarded you none.”

      “It’s a title,” explained Baldy, “up among the picture-cards; but it don’t take no tricks. I’ll tell you, Webb. It’s a brand they’re got for certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch dukes marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be queen. Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation ceremonies we march between little casino and the Ninth Grand Custodian of the Royal Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to appear in photographs, and accept the responsibility for the heir-apparent. That ain’t any square deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you’re a prince-consort; and if I was you, I’d start a interregnum or a habeus corpus or somethin’; and I’d be king if I had to turn from the bottom of the deck.”

      Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose.

      “Baldy,” said Webb, solemnly, “me and you punched cows in the same outfit for years. We been runnin’ on the same range, and ridin’ the same trails since we was boys. I wouldn’t talk about my family affairs to nobody but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I don’t amount to a knot in a stake rope.”

      “When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas,” continued Baldy with Satanic sweetness, “you was some tallow. You had as much to say on the ranch as he did.”

      “I did,” admitted Webb, “up to the time he found out I was tryin’ to get my rope over Santa’s head. Then he kept me out on the range as far from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced to call Santa the ‘cattle queen.’ I’m boss of the cattle — that’s all. She ‘tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can’t sell even a beefsteer to a party of campers, myself. Santa’s the ‘queen’; and I’m Mr. Nobody.”

      “I’d be king if I was you,” repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. “When a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her — on the hoof