mirror of
https://github.com/standardebooks/o-henry_short-fiction.git
synced 2025-03-07 11:00:08 +08:00
[HotW] Cleanup few issues
This commit is contained in:
parent
a79405d4a9
commit
63e5b89aa1
@ -76,7 +76,9 @@
|
||||
<p>I runs around to the light of the big blaze, and pulls the Handbook out of my inside pocket. I kind of laughed when I felt it in my hands—I reckon I was some daffy with the sensation of excitement.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Herky, old boy,” I says to it, as I flipped over the pages, “you ain’t ever lied to me yet, and you ain’t ever throwed me down at a scratch yet. Tell me what, old boy, tell me what!” says I.</p>
|
||||
<p>I turned to “What to do in Case of Accidents,” on page 117. I run my finger down the page, and struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never overlooked anything! It said:</p>
|
||||
<p>Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas.—There is nothing better than flaxseed. Place a few seed in the outer corner of the eye.</p>
|
||||
<blockquote>
|
||||
<p><b>Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas</b>.—There is nothing better than flaxseed. Place a few seed in the outer corner of the eye.</p>
|
||||
</blockquote>
|
||||
<p>I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was running by.</p>
|
||||
<p>“Here,” says I, giving him some money, “run to the drug store and bring a dollar’s worth of flaxseed. Hurry, and you’ll get another one for yourself. Now,” I sings out to the crowd, “we’ll have <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Sampson!” And I throws away my coat and hat.</p>
|
||||
<p>Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. It’s sure death, they say, to go in the house, for the floors was beginning to fall through.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -42,8 +42,8 @@
|
||||
<p>The Mexican had left behind him a wake of closed doors and an empty street, but now people were beginning to emerge from their places of refuge with assumed unconsciousness of anything having happened. Many citizens who knew the ranger pointed out to him with alacrity the course of Garcia’s retreat.</p>
|
||||
<p>As Buckley swung along upon the trail he felt the beginning of the suffocating constriction about his throat, the cold sweat under the brim of his hat, the old, shameful, dreaded sinking of his heart as it went down, down, down in his bosom.</p>
|
||||
<hr/>
|
||||
<p>The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G.N. on the other side of the river. Passengers for <i xml:lang="es">Los Estados Unidos</i> grumblingly sought entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations, for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them. Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool, Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played at crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the sowers and the reapers—they who stampeded the dollars, and they who rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way.</p>
|
||||
<p>On a side track near the mean little ‘dobe depot stood a private car, left there by the Mexican train that morning and doomed by an ineffectual schedule to ignobly await, amid squalid surroundings, connection with the next day’s regular.</p>
|
||||
<p>The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours late, thus failing to connect with the <abbr>I. & G. N.</abbr> on the other side of the river. Passengers for <i xml:lang="es">Los Estados Unidos</i> grumblingly sought entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations, for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them. Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool, Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played at crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the sowers and the reapers—they who stampeded the dollars, and they who rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way.</p>
|
||||
<p>On a side track near the mean little ’dobe depot stood a private car, left there by the Mexican train that morning and doomed by an ineffectual schedule to ignobly await, amid squalid surroundings, connection with the next day’s regular.</p>
|
||||
<p>The car had been once a common day-coach, but those who had sat in it and gringed to the conductor’s hatband slips would never have recognised it in its transformation. Paint and gilding and certain domestic touches had liberated it from any suspicion of public servitude. The whitest of lace curtains judiciously screened its windows. From its fore end drooped in the torrid air the flag of Mexico. From its rear projected the Stars and Stripes and a busy stovepipe, the latter reinforcing in its suggestion of culinary comforts the general suggestion of privacy and ease. The beholder’s eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to culminate in a single name in gold and blue letters extending almost its entire length—a single name, the audacious privilege of royalty and genius. Doubly, then, was this arrogant nomenclature here justified; for the name was that of “Alvarita, Queen of the Serpent Tribe.” This, her car, was back from a triumphant tour of the principal Mexican cities, and now headed for San Antonio, where, according to promissory advertisement, she would exhibit her “Marvellous Dominion and Fearless Control over Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as they Coil and Hiss to the Terror of Thousands of Tongue-tied Tremblers!”</p>
|
||||
<p>One hundred in the shade kept the vicinity somewhat depeopled. This quarter of the town was a ragged edge; its denizens the bubbling froth of five nations; its architecture tent, jacal, and ‘dobe; its distractions the hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the sudden stranger’s store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable fringe upon the old town’s jowl rose a dense mass of trees, surmounting and filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small stream that perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the great canon of the Rio Bravo del Norte.</p>
|
||||
<p>In this sordid spot was condemned to remain for certain hours the impotent transport of the Queen of the Serpent Tribe.</p>
|
||||
@ -89,7 +89,7 @@
|
||||
<p>Slowly, slowly they walked. The ranger regained his belt of weapons. With a fine timidity she begged the indulgence of fingering the great .45’s, with little “Ohs” and “Ahs” of newborn, delicious shyness.</p>
|
||||
<p>The <i xml:lang="es">cañoncito</i> was growing dusky. Beyond its terminus in the river bluff they could see the outer world yet suffused with the waning glory of sunset.</p>
|
||||
<p>A scream—a piercing scream of fright from Alvarita. Back she cowered, and the ready, protecting arm of Buckley formed her refuge. What terror so dire as to thus beset the close of the reign of the never-refore-daunted Queen?</p>
|
||||
<p>Across the path there crawled a caterpillar—a horrid, fuzzy, two-onch caterpillar! Truly, Kuku, thou went avenged. Thus abdicated the Queen of the Serpent Tribe—<i xml:lang="es">viva la reina</i>!</p>
|
||||
<p>Across the path there crawled a caterpillar—a horrid, fuzzy, two-onch caterpillar! Truly, Kuku, thou went avenged. Thus abdicated the Queen of the Serpent Tribe—<i xml:lang="es">viva la reina!</i></p>
|
||||
</section>
|
||||
</body>
|
||||
</html>
|
||||
|
@ -102,7 +102,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Manuel, can you catch Vaminos, in the little pasture, for me?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Why not, señor? I saw him near the puerta but two hours past. He bears a drag-rope.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Get him and saddle him as quick as you can.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“/Prontito, señor/.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“<i xml:lang="es">Prontito, señor.</i>”</p>
|
||||
<p>Soon, mounted on Vaminos, Ranse leaned in the saddle, pressed with his knees, and galloped eastward past the store, where sat Sam trying his guitar in the moonlight.</p>
|
||||
<p>Vaminos shall have a word—Vaminos the good dun horse. The Mexicans, who have a hundred names for the colours of a horse, called him <i xml:lang="es">gruyo</i>. He was a mouse-coloured, slate-coloured, flea-bitten roan-nun, if you can conceive it. Down his back from his mane to his tail went a line of black. He would live forever; and surveyors have not laid off as many miles in the world as he could travel in a day.</p>
|
||||
<p>Eight miles east of the Cibolo ranch-house Ranse loosened the pressure of his knees, and Vaminos stopped under a big ratama tree. The yellow ratama blossoms showered fragrance that would have undone the roses of France. The moon made the earth a great concave bowl with a crystal sky for a lid. In a glade five jackrabbits leaped and played together like kittens. Eight miles farther east shone a faint star that appeared to have dropped below the horizon. Night riders, who often steered their course by it, knew it to be the light in the Rancho de los Olmos.</p>
|
||||
|
Loading…
Reference in New Issue
Block a user