Through the Shadows with O'Henry

CHAPTER XII. Voyaging at leisure; the grand ball in Mexico City; O. Henry's gallantry; the don's rage; O. Henry saved from the Spaniard's knife.

Like aimless drifters in a boat that has neither rudder nor compass, we started on that tour of investigation. We planned to loll along, stopping as we would, looking for a pleasant soil in which to plant ourselves. But we made not the slightest effort to map our course.

And then suddenly, across that idle way, there rippled a little stick of chance, an incident so trivial and insignificant we scarcely noticed it. In a moment t had broken the waters and our boat was all but wrecked by the unconsidered wisp. Bill Porter nearly lost his life for a smile!

The captain of the Helena was at our service. We stopped at Buenos Aires and rode out through the pampas country, but it did not attract us.

Peru was no more alluring. We were looking for big game. And the mighty pastime of this realm was the shooting of the Asiatic rats that stampeded the wharves.

For no particular reason, two of us being acknowledged fugitives and the third a somewhat mysterious soldier of fortune, we stopped off at Mexico City. We knew Porter only as Bill. I had told him the main facts of my life. He did not return the confidence and we did not seek it. Neither Frank nor I placed him in our own class. He was secretive, but we did not attribute the trait to any sinister cause. With the romance of the cowpuncher I figured that this fine, companionable fellow was troubled with an unhappy love affair.

We had loafed along, deliberately dodging issues. At the Hotel De Republic fate turned the little trick that compelled us to change our course.

I was sitting in the lobby waiting for Frank and Porter. Something like a clutch on my arm struck through my listlessness. It was a breath-taking moment. I felt a presence near. I feared to look up. Then a gigantic hand reached down to me. Jumbo Rector, idol of cadet days in Virginia, had picked me to my feet.

Rector was six feet six. I reached a bit above his elbow. We had been the long and the short of it in every devilment pulled in college. If there was one man on the earth I was glad to see at that moment it was this buoyant, healthy-hearted Samson.

Rector had built the Isthmian railroad. He had a palace of white stone and he brought us bag and baggage to his hacienda. That night I told him the things that had happened in the 16 years since we parted.

"Who is this friend of yours, this Bill?" he asked me later. "Are you sure of him? He looks to me like a detective."

"I don't like your friend Rector," Porter confided the same night. "He has a most unpleasant way of scrutinizing one."

Not many days later both Porter and I had proof of Rector's worth. The antipathy between the two was but superficial. There was to be a grand ball at the hotel. All the notables, Porfirio Diaz, the cabinet, the senoritas and the dons were to be present. Rector had us all invited.

We went through preparations as elaborate as a debutante's. Rector loaned us his tailor, and the three of us were outfitted in faultless evening attire. As we were dressing I slipped on my shoulder scabbard. Frank and Rector ridiculed me.

"Let him wear his side arms," Porter jibed. "There should be one gentleman in the party."

"I guarantee you won't need them tonight," Rector promised.

I took them off, but reluctantly. I came back later and slipped the six-shooter into my trousers' belt. That precaution saved the "Four Million" and all her treasured successors for America.

Porter looked a prince that night. Always fastidious about his person, the full dress enhanced his air of distinction. He was a figure to arrest attention in any gathering.

And he was in one of his most inconsequent, bantering moods. We stood against the column commenting on the dress of the dons and the Americans. The Spaniards, in their silk stockings and the gay-colored sashes about their slick-fitting suits, seemed to Porter to harmonize with the beauty and the music of the scene.

"These people have poetry in their make-up," he said. "What an interesting spectacle they make.

As if to illustrate his words, the handsomest couple on the floor swung past. If ever there was a flawless job turned out by God it was that Spanish don. There were a hundred years of culture behind the charm in his manner ; the grace in his walk. He was slimly made, quick and elegant. He had a face of chisled perfection.

The don's partner was a girl of most extraordinary beauty—unusual and compelling. Her red hair, her magnificent blue eyes and her pearl-white skin stood out, among so many dark faces, as something touched with an unnatural radiance. She wore a lavender gown. She had the color and the witchery of a living opal.

I turned to call Bill's attention. The girl had noticed him. As she passed she gave the faintest toss of her head and a smile that was more in the tail of her eye than on her lip. With the deference due to a queen, Porter smiled and made a courtly bow. The don stiffened, but not a muscle of his handsome face twitched. I knew that the incident was not closed.

"Bill, you're making a mistake. You're breeding trouble among these people," I told him.

"Colonel, I feel that that would enliven the occasion." The imperturable, hushed tone gave no indication of the reckless devilment of his mood. Porter was as full of whims as an egg is of meat.

"Sir, I see that you are a stranger here," a voice that was mellow as thick cream addressed us. It was the don. His smile would have been a warning to any man but Bill Porter. "You are not accustomed to our ways. I regret that I have not the honor of your acquaintance. Had I that honor I should be glad to introduce you to the senorita. Since I cannot claim the privilege, I beg you to desist in your attentions to my affianced."

The English was perfect. The don bowed and walked leisurely off. His flow of gentility won me. I could not help comparing him to the money-grabbing, flat-footed boors that decorate an American ballroom. The Castilian seemed to me worthy of respect. Porter was not at all impressed by his request.

The grand march passed again. I do not know what devilment possessed the girl. It seemed to run like an electric current from her to Porter. As she stepped toward him she dropped her mantilla so lightly, so deftly, that it did not even arrest the attenion of the don.

Porter stooped down, picked it up, held it a moment and then passed behind the couple. He flashed a glance of joyous chivalry at the senorita, bowed and handed the lace directly to her.

"Senorita, you dropped this, did you not?" he said. She took it and smiled. Never was Bill Porter more magnetic than that night.

"Now you've played hell," I said. He had committed a mortal breach, and he knew it. Spanish etiquette demanded that the presentation be made to the don, who would thank him for the senorita.

"I've played everything else," he answered undisturbed. The incident had passed. It was at least 10 minutes later. Neither of us saw the don coming until he stood like a tiger before Porter. With a sweep that was lightning, he brought his open hand down in a ringing blow full across Porter's face.

The blow was so sudden, so full of swift animal fury, it knocked Porter against the column. The don drew back, brushing his hand in scornful contempt. The by-standers stood aghast at the stinging humiliation of the patrician stranger.

It was but the breath of an instant. Porter leaped up, his broad shoulders hunched forward, his face crimson with rage. On his cheek, four livid welts stood out like white blisters. In that scene of exquisite culture, the ferocity of the jungle was unleashed.

Like a mad bull, Porter sprang for the don, striking right and left.

The don hurled himself forward, gripping Porter about the waist. Something flashed. The next second, his stiletto was driving straight for Porter's throat.

It was Bill's life or the don's.

I fired in the Spaniard's face.

The sudden roar went like dynamite through the ballroom. The don fell, Porter stood as though hewn of stone, a look of white horror frozen to his face. From everywhere voices whispered and all at once raised into a mighty protest.

Out from the corridors two men dashed the crowd aside, charging upon us. Rector swept me into his gigantic arms as though I were a kitten. Frank caught Porter and pushed him hurriedly from the room.

Rector's carriage stood waiting. We were hustled into it. The most dismal ride of my life began. Not a word was said. Porter sat like a man stricken cold with staggering dismay.

Frank slumped down in one corner, sullen with anger, recoiling from me as though I had done an evil thing. It lashed me as a torment. I felt their tense nervousness, but I felt justified as well.

I had not killed deliberately. I had acted only to save Bill. The death of the don did not trouble me. Porter's quiet stung like a wasp bite. I wanted someone to tell me I had done the right thing.

Resentment and an unbearable irritation against all of them bit into me. I felt as though I were in the "Black Maria*' on the way to the scaffold. An oppressive hush weighed like a suffocating hot breath upon us.

The carriage swung through a narrow lane of palms. The trees looked like upraised black swords. The monotonous clatter of the hoofbeats was the only sound. The silence seemed an intentional reproach to me.

"Damned ingratitude---" I hissed out the words more to myself than to them. Porter stirred and leaned forward. His hand went out and caught mine. I felt immediately at peace. No word could have filled me with the satisfaction of that warm, expressive clasp.

For miles we rode silently, swiftly. Not a comment! Rector lit a cigar. In the soft match-light, I caught a glimpse of Porter's face.

It was still struck with that shocked look of repugnance as though he were recoiling from himself and the thoughtless caprice that had precipitated the ugly tragedy. It was such an unfair consequence of that moment of bantering gaiety.

In a mood of unwonted levity he had answered the challenge in a smile. It was an ordinary ballroom episode. And for that pleasantry he was crushed down with this overwhelming disaster.

The big misfortunes of his life seem all to have come upon him with as little invitation. The law of cause and effect in his case worked in an inscrutable fashion.

When Porter put out his hand to me the tragedy was over as far as I was concerned. To him it was always a hideous memory.

Once he alluded to it. We were sitting together in the warden's office in the Ohio penitentiary.

"That night," he said, "was the most terrible in my life." I could not understand. That the don should die if Porter were to live seemed clearly in- evitable.

"Why?" I asked.

"Colonel, I was as guilty as a murderer," he said.

"You're not sorry it was the don who went down?" His version stung me.

"I've always regretted it," he answered.

His regret was not for the don's death so much as for the failure of his own life. I think that many times Porter would have welcomed death to the galling humiliation of prison life.

If we could have stayed in Mexico all of us might have escaped the shadows of unhappy pasts. We were hurried out and none of us wished to leave.

Down toward the peninsula, about 50 miles south-west of Mexico City, the richest valley in the world lay. We had looked it over.

It was to have been our home. Things grew there almost spontaneously. Bananas, corn, alligator pears asked only to be planted. The palms were magnificent.

"Here," Porter said when we had decided to purchase it, "one could work and dream out his imagery." I did not know what he meant. I learned when I read "Cabbages and Kings." Here, too, Frank and I hoped to reestablish ourselves. Each had his own dream.

In that silent ride the vision passed. To Frank and to me it was but another misadventure in lives already overcrowded. Neither of us realized that a bitter crisis had been reached in the life of the reticent, droll-tongued fellow, "Bill."

We never dreamed that prison waited for him as it did for us. We never thought that this born aristocrat would one day be compelled to eat at a "hog trough" with thieves and murderers and to bend his pride to the ignorant scowl of a convict guard. Porter, I think, knew that the die was cast for him when we left Mexico.

If we could have planted ourselves in that miraculous valley he might have escaped the forbidding future awaiting him. He could have sent for his daughter. He would have avoided the shame of that striped suit the shame that wore into his heart and broke his life up in wretchedness.

But he smiled lightly at the don's sefiorita, and consequences hurled him back to face the issues he had dodged.

It is easy now to understand the look of rigid horror on his face as we got down at Rector's home.

Jumbo poured whiskey for us and tried to lighten our mood. Porter was so unstrung that when the coachman knocked to tell us the team was ready he reeled and seemed about to collapse.

"Don't worry," Rector said as he shook hands. "Everything will be all right. You can trust this driver. I'm going back to the hotel. I will tell the officers you are at my home. It will give you a fair start."

We went to a little way station on the Tampico road, later caught a tramp steamer at Mazatlan and finally arrived at San Diego, striking out on a flying trip to San Francisco, We never got there.