O. Henry

“ She was educated at the Muscogee College, and was making a specialty of—let’s see—eth—yes, ethnology. That’s the art that goes back and traces the descent of different races of people, leading up from jelly-fish through monkeys and to the O’Briens. High Jack had took up that line too, and had read papers about it before all kinds of riotous assemblies—Chautauquas and Choctaws and chowder-parties, and such. Having a mutual taste for musty information like that was what made ’em like each other, I suppose. But I don’t know! What they call congeniality of tastes ain’t always it. ”

“ High Jack seemed to take it hard. I guess he must have esteemed Miss Blue Feather quite highly. I could see that he’d referred the matter to the whiskey-jug. That was his weak point—and many another man’s. I’ve noticed that when a man loses a girl he generally takes to drink either just before or just after it happens. ”

“ He claims to have converted the people to Christianity. He and me don’t assimilate except on state occasions. I imagine they worship some kind of gods or idols yet. But Skidder says he has ’em in the fold.’
"A few days later High Jack and me, prowling around, strikes a plain path into the forest and follows it a good four miles. Then a branch turns to the left. We go a mile, maybe, down that, and run up against the finest ruin you ever saw—solid stone with trees and vines and underbrush all growing up against it and in it and through it. ”

“ And I’m back again on the job at Chubb’s, sir, and I’m going to hold it steady. Come round, and you’ll find the steaks as good as ever."
I wondered what Hunky Magee thought about his own story; so I asked him if he had any theories about reincarnation and transmogrification and such mysteries as he had touched upon.
"Nothing like that," said Hunky, positively. "What ailed High Jack was too much booze and education. They’ll do an Indian up every time." ”

“ We approached it from the rear.
"High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since we landed in Boca. You know how an Indian is—the palefaces fixed his clock when they introduced him to firewater. He’d brought a quart along with him.
"‘Hunky,’ says he, ‘we’ll explore the ancient temple. It may be that the storm that landed us here was propitious. The Minority Report Bureau of Ethnology,’ says he, ‘may yet profit by the vagaries of wind and tide.’
"We went in the rear door of the bum edifice. We struck a kind of alcove without bath. ”

“ I like ’em better than most foreigners that have come over in the last few hundred years. One thing about the Indian is this: when he mixes with the white race he swaps all his own vices for them of the pale-faces—and he retains all his own virtues. ”

“ Is it the heat or the call of the wild that’s got you?’
"But High Jack is too full of exaltation and cane-juice to reply. He stops the disrobing business just short of the Manhattan Beach rules, and then winds them red-and-white shawls around him, and goes out and. stands on the pedestal as steady as any platinum deity you ever saw. And I looks through a peek-hole to see what he is up to.
"In a few minutes in comes the girl with the flower wreath. Danged if I wasn’t knocked a little silly when she got close, she looked so exactly much like Florence Blue Feather. ”

“ It don’t seem to a girl so supernatural, unlikely, strange, and startling that a stone god should come to life for her. If he was to do it for one of them snub-nosed brown girls on the other side of the woods, now, it would be different—but her! ”