

E-text prepared by Glynn Burleson
and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.



SIXES AND SEVENS

by

O. HENRY







CONTENTS

       I. THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS
      II. THE SLEUTHS
     III. WITCHES' LOAVES
      IV. THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES
       V. HOLDING UP A TRAIN
      VI. ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN
     VII. THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER
    VIII. MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN
      IX. AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS
       X. A GHOST OF A CHANCE
      XI. JIMMY HAYES AND MURIEL
     XII. THE DOOR OF UNREST
    XIII. THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES
     XIV. LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE
      XV. OCTOBER AND JUNE
     XVI. THE CHURCH WITH AN OVERSHOT-WHEEL
    XVII. NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT
   XVIII. THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES
     XIX. THE LADY HIGHER UP
      XX. THE GREATER CONEY
     XXI. LAW AND ORDER
    XXII. TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY
   XXIII. THE CALIPH AND THE CAD
    XXIV. THE DIAMOND OF KALI
     XXV. THE DAY WE CELEBRATE




I

THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS


Inexorably Sam Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from the
Rancho Altito at the end of a three-months' visit. It is not to be
expected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscuits
yellow-streaked with saleratus for longer than that. Nick Napoleon,
the big <DW64> man cook, had never been able to make good biscuits.
Once before, when Nick was cooking at the Willow Ranch, Sam had been
forced to fly from his _cuisine_, after only a six-weeks' sojourn.

On Sam's face was an expression of sorrow, deepened with regret and
slightly tempered by the patient forgiveness of a connoisseur who
cannot be understood. But very firmly and inexorably he buckled his
saddle-cinches, looped his stake-rope and hung it to his saddle-horn,
tied his slicker and coat on the cantle, and looped his quirt on his
right wrist. The Merrydews (householders of the Rancho Altito), men,
women, children, and servants, vassals, visitors, employes, dogs, and
casual callers were grouped in the "gallery" of the ranch house, all
with faces set to the tune of melancholy and grief. For, as the coming
of Sam Galloway to any ranch, camp, or cabin between the rivers Frio
or Bravo del Norte aroused joy, so his departure caused mourning and
distress.

And then, during absolute silence, except for the bumping of a hind
elbow of a hound dog as he pursued a wicked flea, Sam tenderly and
carefully tied his guitar across his saddle on top of his slicker and
coat. The guitar was in a green duck bag; and if you catch the
significance of it, it explains Sam.

Sam Galloway was the Last of the Troubadours. Of course you know about
the troubadours. The encyclopaedia says they flourished between the
eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. What they flourished doesn't
seem clear--you may be pretty sure it wasn't a sword: maybe it was a
fiddlebow, or a forkful of spaghetti, or a lady's scarf. Anyhow, Sam
Galloway was one of 'em.

Sam put on a martyred expression as he mounted his pony. But the
expression on his face was hilarious compared with the one on his
pony's. You see, a pony gets to know his rider mighty well, and it is
not unlikely that cow ponies in pastures and at hitching racks had
often guyed Sam's pony for being ridden by a guitar player instead of
by a rollicking, cussing, all-wool cowboy. No man is a hero to his
saddle-horse. And even an escalator in a department store might be
excused for tripping up a troubadour.

Oh, I know I'm one; and so are you. You remember the stories you
memorize and the card tricks you study and that little piece on the
piano--how does it go?--ti-tum-te-tum-ti-tum--those little Arabian Ten
Minute Entertainments that you furnish when you go up to call on your
rich Aunt Jane. You should know that _omnae personae in tres partes
divisae sunt_. Namely: Barons, Troubadours, and Workers. Barons have no
inclination to read such folderol as this; and Workers have no time:
so I know you must be a Troubadour, and that you will understand Sam
Galloway. Whether we sing, act, dance, write, lecture, or paint, we
are only troubadours; so let us make the worst of it.

The pony with the Dante Alighieri face, guided by the pressure of
Sam's knees, bore that wandering minstrel sixteen miles southeastward.
Nature was in her most benignant mood. League after league of
delicate, sweet flowerets made fragrant the gently undulating
prairie. The east wind tempered the spring warmth; wool-white clouds
flying in from the Mexican Gulf hindered the direct rays of the April
sun. Sam sang songs as he rode. Under his pony's bridle he had tucked
some sprigs of chaparral to keep away the deer flies. Thus crowned,
the long-faced quadruped looked more Dantesque than before, and,
judging by his countenance, seemed to think of Beatrice.

Straight as topography permitted, Sam rode to the sheep ranch of old
man Ellison. A visit to a sheep ranch seemed to him desirable just
then. There had been too many people, too much noise, argument,
competition, confusion, at Rancho Altito. He had never conferred upon
old man Ellison the favour of sojourning at his ranch; but he knew he
would be welcome. The troubadour is his own passport everywhere. The
Workers in the castle let down the drawbridge to him, and the Baron
sets him at his left hand at table in the banquet hall. There ladies
smile upon him and applaud his songs and stories, while the Workers
bring boars' heads and flagons. If the Baron nods once or twice in his
carved oaken chair, he does not do it maliciously.

Old man Ellison welcomed the troubadour flatteringly. He had often
heard praises of Sam Galloway from other ranchmen who had been
complimented by his visits, but had never aspired to such an honour
for his own humble barony. I say barony because old man Ellison
was the Last of the Barons. Of course, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton lived too
early to know him, or he wouldn't have conferred that sobriquet
upon Warwick. In life it is the duty and the function of the Baron
to provide work for the Workers and lodging and shelter for the
Troubadours.

Old man Ellison was a shrunken old man, with a short, yellow-white
beard and a face lined and seamed by past-and-gone smiles. His ranch
was a little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the
lonesomest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a
Kiowa Indian man cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed
coyote chained to a fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran
on two sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither
leased nor owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his
language would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with
him. Those were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what
illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have
been written the day on which a troubadour--a troubadour who,
according to the encyclopaedia, should have flourished between the
eleventh and the thirteenth centuries--drew rein at the gates of his
baronial castle!

Old man Ellison's smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he
saw Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to
greet him.

"Hello, Mr. Ellison," called Sam cheerfully. "Thought I'd drop over
and see you a while. Notice you've had fine rains on your range. They
ought to make good grazing for your spring lambs."

"Well, well, well," said old man Ellison. "I'm mighty glad to see
you, Sam. I never thought you'd take the trouble to ride over to
as out-of-the-way an old ranch as this. But you're mighty welcome.
'Light. I've got a sack of new oats in the kitchen--shall I bring out
a feed for your hoss?"

"Oats for him?" said Sam, derisively. "No, sir-ee. He's as fat as a
pig now on grass. He don't get rode enough to keep him in condition.
I'll just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you
don't mind."

I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries
did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously as their
parallels did that evening at old man Ellison's sheep ranch. The
Kiowa's biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong.
Ineradicable hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison's
weather-tanned face. As for the troubadour, he said to himself that
he had stumbled upon pleasant places indeed. A well-cooked, abundant
meal, a host whom his lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight
far beyond the merits of the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere
that his sensitive soul at that time craved united to confer upon him
a satisfaction and luxurious ease that he had seldom found on his
tours of the ranches.

After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took
out his guitar. Not by way of payment, mind you--neither Sam Galloway
nor any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the
late Tommy Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the
esteemed but often obscure Mother Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for his
supper. No true troubadour would do that. He would have his supper,
and then sing for Art's sake.

Sam Galloway's repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and
between thirty and forty songs. He by no means stopped there. He could
talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And
he never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could
sit. I am strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a
portrait as well as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will
allow.

I wish you could have seen him: he was small and tough and
inactive beyond the power of imagination to conceive. He wore an
ultramarine-blue woollen shirt laced down the front with a pearl-gray,
exaggerated sort of shoestring, indestructible brown duck clothes,
inevitable high-heeled boots with Mexican spurs, and a Mexican straw
sombrero.

That evening Sam and old man Ellison dragged their chairs out under
the hackberry trees. They lighted cigarettes; and the troubadour
gaily touched his guitar. Many of the songs he sang were the weird,
melancholy, minor-keyed _canciones