Ships

by O. Henry

Within a week a suitable building had been secured in the CalleGrande, and Mr. Hemstetter's stock of shoes arranged upon theirshelves. The rent of the store was moderate; and the stock madea fine showing of neat white boxes, attractively displayed. Johnny's friends stood by him loyally. On the first day Keoghstrolled into the store in a casual kind of way about once every hour,and bought shoes. After he had purchased a pair each of extensionsoles, congress gaiters, button kids, low-quartered calfs, dancingpumps, rubber boots, tans of various hues, tennis shoes and floweredslippers, he sought out Johnny to be prompted as to the names of otherkinds that he might inquire for. The other English-speaking residentsalso played their parts nobly by buying often and liberally. Keoghwas grand marshal, and made them distribute their patronage, thuskeeping up a fair run of custom for several days. Mr. Hemstetter was gratified by the amount of business done thus far;but expressed surprise that the natives were so backward with theircustom. "Oh, they're awfully shy," explained Johnny, as he wiped his foreheadnervously. "They'll get the habit pretty soon. They'll come witha rush when they do come." One afternoon Keogh dropped into the consul's office, chewing anunlighted cigar thoughtfully. "Got anything up your sleeve?" he inquired of Johnny. "If you haveit's about time to show it. If you can borrow some gent's hat inthe audience, and make a lot of customers for an idle stock of shoescome out of it you'd better spiel. The boys have all laid in enoughfootwear to last 'em ten years; and there's nothing doing in the shoestore but dolcy far nienty. I just came by there. Your venerablevictim was standing in the door, gazing through his specs at the baretoes passing by his emporium. The natives here have got the trueartistic temperament. Me and Clancy took eighteen tintypes thismorning in two hours. There's been but one pair of shoes sold allday. Blanchard went in and bought a pair of furlined house-slippersbecause he thought he saw Miss Hemstetter go into the store. I sawhim throw the slippers into the lagoon afterwards." "There's a Mobile fruit steamer coming in tomorrow or next day," saidJohnny. We can't do anything until then." "What are you going to do--try to create a demand?" "Political economy isn't your strong point," said the consul,impudently. "You can't create a demand. But you can createa necessity for a demand. That's what I am going to do." Two weeks after the consul sent his cable, a fruit steamer broughthim a huge, mysterious brown bale of some unknown commodity. Johnny'sinfluence with the custom-house people was sufficiently strong forhim to get the goods turned over to him without the usual inspection.He had the bale taken to the consulate and snugly stowed in the backroom. That night he ripped open a corner of it and took out a handfulof the cockleburrs. He examined them with the care with which awarrior examines his arms before he goes forth to battle for hislady-love and life. The burrs were the ripe August product, as hardas filberts, and bristling with spines as tough and sharp as needles.Johnny whistled softly a little tune, and went out to find BillyKeogh. Later in the night, when Coralio was steeped in slumber, he and Billywent forth into the deserted streets with their coats bulging likeballoons. All up and down the Calle Grande they went, sowing thesharp burrs carefully in the sand, along the narrow sidewalks, inevery foot of grass between the silent houses. And then they tookthe side streets and byways, missing none. No place where the foot ofman, woman or child might fall was slighted. Many trips they made toand from the prickly hoard. And then, nearly at the dawn, they laidthemselves down to rest calmly, as great generals do after planninga victory according to the revised tactics, and slept, knowing thatthey had sowed with the accuracy of Satan sowing tares and theperseverance of Paul planting. With the rising sun came the purveyors of fruits and meats, andarranged their wares in and around the little market-house. Atone end of the town near the seashore the market-house stood; andthe sowing of the burrs had not been carried that far. The dealerswaited long past the hour when their sales usually began. Nonecame to buy. "!Que hay?~" they began to exclaim, one to another.At their accustomed time, from every 'dobe and palm hut and grass-thatched shack and dim ~patio~ glided women--black women, brownwomen, lemon-colored women, women dun and yellow and tawny. Theywere the marketers starting to purchase the family supply of cassava,plantains, meat, fowls, and tortillas. Decollete they were andbare-armed and bare-footed, with a single skirt reaching belowthe knee. Stolid and ox-eyed, they stepped from their doorwaysinto the narrow paths or upon the soft grass of the streets. The first to emerge uttered ambiguous squeals, and raised one footquickly. Another step and they sat down, with shrill cries of alarm,to pick at the new and painful insects that had stung them upon thefeet. "~Que picadores diablos!~" they screeched to one another acrossthe narrow ways. Some tried the grass instead of the paths, but therethey were also stung and bitten by the strange little prickly balls.They plumped down in the grass, and added their lamentations to thoseof their sisters in the sandy paths. All through the town was heardthe plaint of the feminine jabber. The venders in the market stillwondered why no customers came. Then men, lords of the earth, came forth. They, too, began to hop,to dance, to limp, and to curse. They stood stranded and foolish,or stopped to pluck at the scourge that attacked their feet andankles. Some loudly proclaimed the pest to be poisonous spidersof an unknown species. And then the children ran out for their morning romp. And now tothe uproar was added the howls of limping infants and cockleburredchildhood. Every minute the advancing day brought forth freshvictims. Dona Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas stepped from herhonored doorway, as was her daily custom, to procure fresh breadfrom the ~panaderia~ across the street. She was clad in a skirt offlowered, yellow satin, a chemise of ruffled linen, and wore a purplemantilla from the looms of Spain. Her lemon-tinted feet, alas! werebare. Her progress was majestic, for were not her ancestors hidalgosof Aragon? Three steps she made across the velvety grass, and sether aristocratic sole upon a bunch of Johnny's burrs. Dona MariaCastillas y Buenventura de las Casas emitted a yowl even as awild-cat. Turning about, she fell upon hands and knees, and crawled--ay, like a beast of the field she crawled back to her honorabledoor-sill. Don Senor Ildefonso Federico Valdazar, ~Juez de la Paz~, weighingtwenty stone, attempted to convey his bulk to the ~pulperia~ at thecorner of the plaza in order to assuage his matutinal thirst. Thefirst plunge of his unshod foot into the cool grass struck a concealedmine. Don Ildefonso fell like a crumpled cathedral, crying out thathe had been fatally bitten by a deadly scorpion. Everywhere were theshoeless citizens hopping, stumbling, limping, and picking from theirfeet the venomous insects that had come in a single night to harassthem. The first to perceive the remedy was Esteban Delgado, the barber, aman of travel and education. Sitting upon a stone, he plucked burrsfrom his toes, and made oration: "Behold, my friends, these bugs of the devil! I know them well.They soar through the skies in swarms like pigeons. These are deadones that fell during the night. In Yucatan I have seen them as largeas oranges. Yes! There they hiss like serpents, and have wings likebats. It is the shoes--the shoes that one needs! ~Zapatos--zapatospara mi!~" Esteban hobbled to Mr. Hemstetter's store, and bought shoes. Comingout, he swaggered down the street with impunity, reviling loudly thebugs of the devil. The suffering ones sat up or stood upon one footand beheld the immune barber. Men, women and children took up thecry: "~Zapatos! zapatos!~" The necessity for the demand had been created. The demand followed.That day Mr. Hemstetter sold three hundred pairs of shoes. "It is really surprising," he said to Johnny, who came up in theevening to help him straighten out the stock, "how trade is pickingup. Yesterday I made but three sales." "I told you they'd whoop things up when they got started," said theconsul. "I think I shall order a dozen more cases of goods, to keep the stockup," said Mr. Hemstetter, beaming through his spectacles. "I wouldn't send in any orders yet," advised Johnny. "Wait till yousee how the trade holds up." Each night Johnny and Keogh sowed the crop that grew dollars by day.At the end of ten days two-thirds of the stock of shoes had beensold; and the stock of cockleburrs was exhausted. Johnny cabledto Pink Dawson for another 500 pounds, paying twenty cents per poundas before. Mr. Hemstetter carefully made up an order for $1500 worthof shoes from Northern firms. Johnny hung about the store until thisorder was ready for the mail, and succeeded in destroying it beforeit reached the postoffice. That night he took Rosine under the mango tree by Godwin's porch,and confessed everything. She looked him in the eye, and said: "Youare a very wicked man. Father and I will go back home. You say itwas a joke? I think it is a very serious matter." But at the end of half an hour's argument the conversation had beenturned upon a different subject. The two were considering therespective merits of pale blue and pink wall-paper with which the oldcolonial mansion of the Atwoods in Dalesburg was to be decorated afterthe wedding. On the next morning Johnny confessed to Mr. Hemstetter. The shoemerchant put on his spectacles, and said through them: "You strike meas being a most extraordinary young scamp. If I had not managed thisenterprise with good business judgment my entire stock of goods mighthave been a complete loss. Now, how do you propose to dispose of therest of it?" When the second invoice of cockleburrs arrived Johnny loaded them andthe remainder of the shoes into schooner, and sailed down the coastto Alazan. There, in the same dark and diabolical manner, he repeatedhis success: and came back with a bag of money and not so much asa shoestring. And then he besought his great Uncle of the waving goatee and starredvest to accept his resignation, for the lotus no longer lured him.He hankered for the spinach and cress of Dalesburg. The services of Mr. William Terence Keogh as acting consul, pro term.,were suggested and accepted, and Johnny sailed with the Hemstettersback to his native shores. Keogh slipped into the sinecure of the American consulship withthe ease that never left him even in such high places. The tintypeestablishment was soon to become a thing of the past, although itsdeadly work along the peaceful and helpless Spanish Main was nevereffaced. The restless partners were about to be off again, scoutingahead of the slow ranks of Fortune. But now they would take differentways. There were rumors of a promising uprising in Peru; and thitherthe martial Clancy would turn his adventurous steps. As for Keogh,he was figuring in his mind and on quires of Government letter-headsa scheme that dwarfed the art of misrepresenting the human countenanceupon tin. "What suits me," Keogh used to say, "in the way of a businessproposition is something diversified that looks like a longer shotthan it is--something in the way of a genteel graft that isn't workedenough for the correspondence schools to be teaching it by mail.I take the long end; but I like to have at least as good a chance towin as a man learning to play poker on an ocean steamer, or runningfor governor of Texas on the Republican ticket. And when I cash inmy winnings I don't want to find any widows' and orphans' chips inmy stack." The grass-grown globe was the green table on which Keogh gambled.The games he played were of his own invention. He was no grubberafter the diffident dollar. Nor did he care to follow it with hornand hounds. Rather he loved to coax it with egregious and brilliantflies from its habitat in the waters of strange streams. Yet Keoghwas a business man; and his schemes, in spite of their singularity,were as solidly set as the plans of a building contractor. InArthur's time Sir William Keogh would have been a Knight of the RoundTable. In these modern days he rides abroad, seeking the Graftinstead of the Grail. Three days after Johnny's departure, two small schooners appearedoff Coralio. After some delay a boat put off from one of them, andbrought a sunburned young man ashore. This young man had a shrewdand calculating eye; and he gazed with amazement at the strange thingsthat he saw. He found on the beach some one who directed him to theconsul's office; and thither he made his way at a nervous gait. Keogh was sprawled in the official chair, drawing caricaturesof his Uncle's head on an official pad of paper. He looked upat his visitor. "Where's Johnny Atwood?" inquired the sunburned young man, ina business tone. "Gone," said Keogh, working carefully at Uncle Sam's necktie. "That's just like him," remarked the nut-brown one, leaning againstthe table. "He always was a fellow to gallivant around instead of'tending to business. Will he be in soon?" "Don't think so," said Keogh, after a fair amount of deliberation."I s'pose he's out at some of his tomfoolery," conjectured thevisitor, in a tone of virtuous conviction. "Johnny never would stickto anything long enough to succeed. I wonder how he manages to runhis business here, and never be 'round to look after it." "I'm looking after the business just now," admitted the pro term.consul. "Are you--then, say--where's the factory?" "What factory?" asked Keogh, with a mildly polite interest. "Why, the factory where they use them cockleburrs. Lord knows whatthey use 'em for, anyway! I've got the basements of both them shipsout there loaded with 'em. I'll give you a bargain in this lot.I've had every man, woman and child around Dalesburg that wasn'tbusy pickin' 'em for a month. I hired these ships to bring 'em over.Everybody thought I was crazy. Now, you can have this lot for fifteencents a pound, delivered on land. And if you want more I guess oldAlabam' can come up to the demand. Johnny told me when he left homethat if he struck anything down here that there was any money in he'dlet me in on it. Shall I drive the ships in and hitch?" A look of supreme, almost incredulous, delight dawned in Keogh'sruddy countenance. He dropped his pencil. His eyes turned uponthe sunburned young man with joy in them mingled with fear lesthis ecstasy should prove a dream. "For God's sake tell me," said Keogh, earnestly, "are you DinkPawson?" "My name is Pinkney Dawson," said the cornerer of the cockleburrmarket. Billy Keogh slid rapturously and gently from his chair to his favoritestrip of matting on the floor. There were not many sounds in Coralio on that sultry afternoon. Amongthose that were may be mentioned a noise of enraptured and unrighteouslaughter from a prostrate Irish-American, while a sunburned young man,with a shrewd eye, looked on him with wonder and amazement. Also the"tramp, tramp, tramp" of many well-shod feet in the streets outside.Also the lonesome wash of the waves that beat along the historicshores of the Spanish Main.

Previous Authors：Shearing the Wolf Next Authors：Shoes