“‘Pappoose!’ says John Tom, and I notice that the flowers of the white man’s syntax have left his tongue.  He is the original proposition in bear’s claws and copper color.  ‘Me bring,’ says he, and he lays the kid in his mother’s arms.  ‘Run fifteen mile,’ says John Tom—­’Ugh!  Catch white man.  Bring pappoose.’

“The little woman is in extremities of gladness.  She must wake up that stir-up trouble youngster and hug him and make proclamation that he is his mamma’s own precious treasure.  I was about to ask questions, but I looked at Mr. Little Bear, and my eye caught the sight of something in his belt.  ‘Now go to bed, ma’am,’ says I, ’and this gadabout youngster likewise, for there’s no more danger, and the kidnapping business is not what it was earlier in the night.’

“I inveigled John Tom down to camp quick, and when he tumbled over asleep I got that thing out of his belt and disposed of it where the eye of education can’t see it.  For even the football colleges disapprove of the art of scalp-taking in their curriculums.

“It is ten o’clock next day when John Tom wakes up and looks around.  I am glad to see the nineteenth century in his eyes again.

“‘What was it, Jeff?’ he asks.

“‘Heap firewater,’ says I.

“John Tom frowns, and thinks a little.  ‘Combined,’ says he directly, ’with the interesting little physiological shake-up known as reversion to type.  I remember now.  Have they gone yet?’

“‘On the 7:30 train,’ I answers.

“‘Ugh!’ says John Tom; ’better so.  Paleface, bring big Chief Wish-Heap-Dough a little bromo-seltzer, and then he’ll take up the redman’s burden again.’”

[Illustration:  Emigrants’ Camp (An early drawing by O. Henry)]

HELPING THE OTHER FELLOW

[Originally published in Munsey’s Magazine, December,
1908.]

“But can thim that helps others help thimselves!”
—­Mulvaney.

This is the story that William Trotter told me on the beach at Aguas Frescas while I waited for the gig of the captain of the fruit steamer Andador which was to take me abroad.  Reluctantly I was leaving the Land of Always Afternoon.  William was remaining, and he favored me with a condensed oral autobiography as we sat on the sands in the shade cast by the Bodega Nacional.

As usual, I became aware that the Man from Bombay had already written the story; but as he had compressed it to an eight-word sentence, I have become an expansionist, and have quoted his phrase above, with apologies to him and best regards to Terence.

II

“Don’t you ever have a desire to go back to the land of derby hats and starched collars?” I asked him.  “You seem to be a handy man and a man of action,” I continued, “and I am sure I could find you a comfortable job somewhere in the States.”