Ransom of Red Pussy

"But she's gone" -- continues Bill -- "gone home. I showed her the road to Hilltop and kicked her about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I'm sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Dickdrill to the madhouse."

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is 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?"

"Then you might turn around," says I, "and have a look behind you."

Bill turns and sees the girl, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the round 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 Corset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him is 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 with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for any one to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But no, sirree! 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 Hilltop.

I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:

Two Desperate Men.

Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my daughter. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Debbie home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take her off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe she is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing her back.

Very respectfully,

EBENEZER CORSET.

"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 Mr. Corset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let the chance go, are you?"

"Tell you the truth, Bill," says I, "this little ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We'll take her home, pay the ransom and make our get-away."

We took her home that night. We got her to go by telling her that her father had found her a rich man for her to marry, with stamina and sexual appetite to match her own. And a dick like a mule's.

It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer s front door. Just at the 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 Corset's hand.

When the kid found out we were going to leave her at home she started up a howl like a calliope and fastened herself as tight as a leech to Bill's family jewels. Her father peeled her away gradually, like a porous plaster.

"How long can you hold her?" asks Bill.

"I'm not as strong as I used to be," says old Corset, "but I think I can promise you ten minutes."

"Enough," says Bill. "In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for a Canadian bordello."

And, as dark as it was, and as fat and sore in the crotch as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Hilltop before I could catch up with him.

"Write what you like. There are no other rules." ~ O. Henry