The Ransom of Red Chief, by O. Henry / Southern Slumber

Tonight on Southern Slumber, settle in for O. Henry's classic tale The Ransome of Red Chief. Set in the American South, this humorous story follows two would-be kidnappers who discover they are way over their heads with this young rascal of a captive. Read slowly and softly for relaxation, this timeless story offers a soothing journey into another era. 

Sweet dreams and thank you for spending your evening here at Southern Slumber. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Southern Slumber, bedtime stories for sleep. I'm glad you're here tonight. I'm Holly, and each week we visit a corner of the American South where the air is warm, the aroma of gardenia lingers in the evening air, and everything moves in slow motion. You can simply drift in and out, letting the sound of my voice carry you. If sleep comes, you can let it. I'll be right here as you rest. So close your eyes if you haven't already. Take a slow breath in and let it fall away. Tonight, before we begin our story, I would like to take you to Greensboro, North Carolina, where the author of our short story was born and spent his youth. Greensboro is nestled among the rolling hills of the Piedmont, halfway between the mountains of western North Carolina and the Atlantic beaches to the east. It's a city of broad avenues, hot summers and a rich literary heritage. It was here in eighteen sixty two that William Sidney Porter was born, the writer who would be known by his pen name of O Henry. When Porter was just three years old, his mother died of tuberculosis. His father, a physician, arranged for him to be raised by his paternal grandmother and his aunt Lena in Greensboro. Because public schools were closing following the Civil War, his Aunt Lena taught him at home, instilling in him a love of literature and classic adventure stories. He became a gifted storyteller, later learning how to transform those spoken talks into stories on the printed page. His Aunt Lena opened up a school in Greensboro, where he attended, and her classroom has been replicated in the Greensboro Historical Museum. mister Porter began working at his uncle's pharmacy in Greensboro, which was the WC Porter and Company Drugstore in downtown Greensboro. He completed his apprenticeship there at the drugstore and became a licensed pharmacist at nineteen. Two years later, he headed to Texas where he eventually married, had a child, and lived a rather fascinating life. He was a prolific writer, writing hundreds of short stories that captured the imagination with his wit, down to earth characters, and his famous plot twists. He died in nineteen ten in New York City, where he had spent the final ten years of his life. Before we settle into tonight's story, I'd like to share one more charming connection between O Henry and the city of Greensboro. The first O Henry Hotel was built in nineteen nineteen in downtown Greensboro. It was a modern hotel with 300 rooms and was wildly successful. It closed in the nineteen sixties, demolished in nineteen seventy nine, and a new hotel building was built in the late nineteen nineties, two miles from the original location. The hotel today is elegant and charming and pucked away so that you feel like you're entering a different century when you step foot in the hotel. Among other things, the hotel offers afternoon tea in the social lobby, served up in the English way with warm scones, delicate finger sandwiches, fragrant teas and elegant table settings. It's become a Greensboro tradition. Throughout the year you can enjoy themed tea parties such as the Matter Hatter tea, the Wizard of Oz tea or the Nutcracker tea. I would like to think O'Henry would have thoroughly enjoyed an afternoon tea spent there. Perhaps we should imagine a cowboy and bandit afternoon tea as we wind down the night and listen to this next story. And now as the evening settles around you, let's turn the page and visit one of O'Henry's most beloved tales, The Ransom of Red Chief. First published in nineteen oh seven, it turns the classic kidnapping story upside down, proving that sometimes the captors have more fear than their captive. So curl up in your blanket, relax and settle in for a deep s deep night sleep. The ransom of Red Chief. It looked like a good thing, but wait till I tell you we were down south in Alabama with Bill Driscoll and myself when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was as Bill afterward expressed it, during a moment of temporary mental apparition. We didn't find that out till later. There was a town down there as flat as a flannel cape, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a maypole. Bill had me, Bill and me, we had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town lot scheme in western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Well, we said in a str a strong and a semi rural community like this and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with anything stronger than constables and maybe some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the weekly farmer's budget. So it looked good. We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bar relief freckles and hair the color of the cover of the magazine you buy at the newsstand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. Oh but wait till I tell you about two miles from summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar break. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions. One evening around some after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's house. The kid was in the street throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence. Hey little boy, says Bill, would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride? Well, the boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick. That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars, says Bill, climbing over the wheel. The boy put up a fight like a welterweight cinnamon bear. But at last we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave and I hitched the horse and the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village three miles away, where we had hired it and walked back up to the mountain. Bill was pasting court plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee with two buzzard tail feathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up and says Ha, her said pale face. Do you dare enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains? He's all right now, says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. We're playing Indian. We're making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I'm old Hank the trapper, Red Chief's cat Red Chief's captive, and to be scalped at daybreak. Geronimo, that kid can kick hard. Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive himself. He immediately christened me Snake Eye, the spy, and announced that when his braves returned from the war path, I was to be broiled at the steak at the rising of the sun. Then we had supper and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy and began to talk. He made a during dinner speech something like this. I like this vine. I never camped out before, but I had a pet possum once and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats up rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's ant speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the tree movin' make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice Saturday. I do not like girls. You daysent catch toads unless there's a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. Parrot can talk, but well a monkey or fish can't. How many does it take to make twelve? Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scalps of the hated pale face. Now and then he would let out a war hoop that made old Hank the trapper shiver. The boy had built terrorized from the start. Red chief, says I to the kid. Would you like to go home? Aw, for what? says he. I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake Eye, will ya? Well, not right away, says I. We'll stay here in the cave a little while. All right, says he. That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life. We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put red chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching hiss hard in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last I fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair. Just at daybreak I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells or howls, or shouts, or whoops or yalps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs. They were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak. I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red chief was sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the other he had the sharp case knife we used for slicing bacon, and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before. I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But from that moment Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on the side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along towards sun up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid, but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock. What are you getting up so soon for, Sam? asked Bill. Me? says I oh I got a kind of pain in my shoulder, I thought sitting up would rest it. You're a liar, says Bill. You're afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And he would too, if he could find a match. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will play out money to get a little imp like that back home? Oh sure, said I. A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the chief get up and cook breakfast while I go up on top of the mountain and reconnoiture. I went up on the peak of the little mountain and I ran my eyes over the vicinity. Over toward summit, I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with siffs and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. Well, there was a sylvan latitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama lay exposed to my view. Well, perhaps, says I to myself, it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves, says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast. When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a coconut. He put a red hot oil potato down my back, exclaimed Bill, and then mashed it with his foot, and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam? I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. I'll fix ya, says the kid to Bill. No man ever yet struck the red chief what he got paid for it. You better beware. After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket, and goes outside the cave, unwinding it. What's he up to now? says Bill, anxiously. You don't think you'll run away, do you, Sam? No, fear of it, says I. He don't seem to be much of a homebody. But we've got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don't seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance. But maybe they haven't realized yet that he's gone. His folks may think he's spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbors. Anyway, he'll be missed today. Tonight we must get a message to his father, demanding the two thousand dollars for his return. Just then we heard a kind of war hoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head. I dodged and I heard a heavy thud and kind of a sigh from Bill like a like a horse gives out when you take a saddle off. A rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour. By and by Bill sits up and Bill's behind his ears and says Sam, do you know who my favorite biblical character is? Take it easy, says I. You'll come to your senses presently. King Herod, says he, you won't go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam? I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled. If you don't behave, says I, I'll take you straight home. Now, are you gonna be good or not? Oh I was only funnin', he says sullenly. I didn't mean to hurt old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I'll behave snake eye. If you won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the scalp today. I don't know the game, says I. That's for you and mister Bill to decide he's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a while on business. Now, you can come in, make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go at once. I made him and Bill shake hands and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to the old man Drew. Source it that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid. You know, Sam, says Bill, I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood and poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnap that two lugged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long, will you, Sam? Oh, I'll be back sometime this afternoon. You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we'll write the letter to old Dorset. Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter, while Red Chief with the blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me fearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. I ain't attempting, says he, to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me. So to relieve Bill, I seated and we collaborated a letter that ran this way Ebenezer Dorset Esquire We have your boy concealed in a place far from summit. It is useless for you or the most skillful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return, the money to be left at midnight tonight at the same spot and in the same box as your reply, as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answers in a writing by a solitary messenger tonight at half past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right hand side. At the bottom of the fence post, opposite the third tree will be found a small pasteboard box. The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to summit. If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again. If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted. Two desperate men. I addressed this letter to Dorset and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says Aw, Snake Eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you were gone. Oh play it, of course, says I. Mr Bill will play with you. What kind of game is it? Well, I'm the Black Scout, says Red Chief, and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I'm tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout. All right, says I. It sounds harmless to me. I guess mister Bill will help you foil the pesky savages. What am I to do? asked Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously. You are the hoss, says Black Scout. Get out on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss? You'd better keep him interested, said I, till we get the scheme going up. Loosen, loosen it up now. Bill gets down on all his fours and a look comes in his eyes like a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap. How far is it to the stockade, kid? he asked in a husky manner of voice. Ninety miles, said Black Scout. And you have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa now. Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in a side. For heaven's sakes, says Bill, hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me, or I'll get up and warm you good. I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the post office and store, talking with the chaw bacons that came in to trade. One whiskerin says that he hears summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebeneze Dorset's boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster and the mail carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to summit. When I got back to the cave, Bill and the boy, well they were nowhere to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response. So I lighted my pipe and I sat down on a mossy bank to await developments. In about half an hour I heard a bushes rustle, and Bill wobbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat, and wiped his face with a real handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him. Sam, says Bill, I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self defense. But there's a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I've sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times, goes on Bill, that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of 'em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I've been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation, but there came a limit. What's the trouble, Bill? I ask 'em. I was rode, says Bill, the ninety miles to the stockade, not bar in an inch. Then when the settlers were rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And then for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there was nothing in holes, how a road can run both ways, and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of the clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black and blue from the knees down, and I've got two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized. Well, but he's gone, continues Bill. Gone home. I showed him the road to summit and kicked him about eight feet near there at one hit. I'm sorry we lose the ransom, but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse. Bill is puffin' and blowin', but there's a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose pink features. Bill, says I, there isn't any heart disease in your family, is there? No, says Bill. Nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why? Well, then you might turn around, says I, and have a look behind you. Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind, and then I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately, and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him as soon as he felt a little better. I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left and the money later on was close to the road fence, big bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for anyone to come for the note, they could see him a long way off, crossing the fields or in the road. But no surrey. At half past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive. Exactly on time, a half grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fence post, slips a folded piece of paper into it, and pedals away again back toward the summit. I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slid along the fence till I struck the woods and was back at the cave in another half hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen and a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was to two desperate men. Gentlemen, I received your letter today by post in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you're a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter proposition, which I'm inclined to believe you'll accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night for the neighbors believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very respectfully Ebenezer Dorset Well great pirates of Penzance, says I, of all the impudent but I glanced at Bill and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute. Sam, says he, what's two hundred and fifty dollars after all? We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think mister Dorset is a spindthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't gonna let the chance go, are you? Well, tell you the truth, Bill, says I, this little you lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We'll take him home, pay the ransom and make our getaway. We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day. It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer's front door. Just at that moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset's hand. When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home, he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually like a porous plaster. How long can you hold him? asked Bill. I'm not as strong as I used to be, says old Dorset, but I think I can promise you ten minute ten minutes. Enough, says Bill. In ten minutes I shall cross the central, southern, and middle western states and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border. And as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of the summit before I could catch up with him. Thank you for spending part of your evening with me here at Southern Slumber. I hope you enjoyed this story. As the night settles around you, imagine the lights dimming in the grand O'Henry Hotel, the last cups of tea being cleared away, and the quiet hush that comes when a long day finally ends. I hope this story brought you a little comfort, a little laughter, and perhaps a lovely sleep. Rest well and I'll meet you again next week where the air is warm, the gardenias linger in the evening air, and everything moves in slow motion. Good night for now.