O. Henry



   The Indian Summer Of Dry Valley Johnson

    Dry Valley Johnson shook the bottle. You have to shake  the  bottle  before 
using; for sulphur will not dissolve. Then Dry Valley saturated a small  sponge 
with the liquid and rubbed it carefully into the roots  of  his  hair.  Besides 
sulphur there was sugar of lead in it and tincture of nux vomica and  bay  rum. 
Dry Valley found the recipe in a Sunday newspaper. You must next  be  told  why 
a strong man came to fall a victim to a Beauty Hint.
    Dry Valley had been a sheepman. His real name was Hector, but he  had  been 
rechristened after his range to distinguish him from "Elm Creek"  Johnson,  who 
ran sheep further down the Frio.
    Many years of living face to face with sheep on their own terms wearied Dry 
Valley Johnson. So, he sold his ranch for eighteen thousand dollars  and  moved 
to Santa Rosa to live a life of gentlemanly ease. Being a silent and melancholy 
person of thirty-five - or perhaps thirty-eight - he soon  became  that  cursed 
and earth-cumbering thing - an elderlyish bachelor with a hobby. Some one  gave 
him his first strawberry to eat, and he was done for.
    Dry Valley bought a four-room cottage in the  village,  and  a  library  on 
strawberry  culture.  Behind  the  cottage  was  a  garden  of  which  he  made 
a strawberry patch. In his old grey woolen shirt, his brown duck trousers,  and 
high-heeled boots he sprawled all day on a canvas cot under a live-oak tree  at 
his back door studying the history of the seductive, scarlet berry.
    The school teacher, Miss De Witt, spoke of him as "a fine, presentable man, 
for all his middle age." But, the focus of Dry Valley's eyes embraced no women. 
They were merely beings who flew skirts as a signal for him to  lift  awkwardly 
his heavy, round-crowned, broad-brimmed felt Stetson whenever he met them,  and 
then hurry past to get back to his beloved berries.
    And all this recitative by the chorus is only to  bring  us  to  the  point 
where you may be told why Dry Valley shook up  the  insoluble  sulphur  in  the 
bottle. So long-drawn and inconsequential a thing is history - the  anamorphous 
shadow of a milestone reaching down the road between us and the setting sun.
    When his strawberries  were  beginning  to  ripen  Dry  Valley  bought  the 
heaviest buggy whip in the Santa Rosa store. He sat for many  hours  under  the 
live oak tree plaiting and weaving in an extension to its  lash.  When  it  was 
done he could snip a leaf from a bush twenty feet away with  the  cracker.  For 
the bright, predatory eyes of Santa  Rosa  youth  were  watching  the  ripening 
berries, and Dry Valley was arming himself against  their  expected  raids.  No 
greater care had he taken of his tender lambs during his ranching days than  he 
did of his cherished fruit, warding it from the hungry wolves that whistled and 
howled and shot their marbles and peered through the fence that surrounded  his
property.
    In the house next to Dry Valley's lived a widow with  a  pack  of  children 
that gave the husbandman frequent anxious misgivings. In the  woman  there  was 
a strain of the Spanish. She had wedded one of the name of O'Brien. Dry  Valley 
was a connoisseur in cross strains; and he foresaw trouble in the offspring  of 
this union.
    Between the two homesteads ran a crazy picket fence overgrown with  morning 
glory and wild gourd vines. Often he could see little heads with mops of  black 
hair and flashing dark eyes dodging in and out  between  the  pickets,  keeping 
tabs on the reddening berries.
    Late one afternoon Dry Valley went to the post office. When he  came  back, 
like Mother Hubbard he found the deuce  to  pay.  The  descendants  of  Iberian 
bandits and Hibernian cattle raiders  had  swooped  down  upon  his  strawberry 
patch. To the outraged vision of Dry Valley there seemed to be a  sheep  corral 
full of them; perhaps they numbered five or six.  Between  the  rows  of  green 
plants they were stooped, hopping  about  like  toads,  gobbling  silently  and 
voraciously his finest fruit.
    Dry Valley slipped into the house, got his whip, and charged the marauders. 
The lash curled about the legs of the nearest - a greedy  ten-year-old - before 
they knew they were  discovered.  His  screech  gave  warning;  and  the  flock 
scampered for the fence like a drove of javelis flushed in the  chaparral.  Dry 
Valley's whip drew a toll of two more elfin shrieks before they  dived  through 
the vine-clad fence and disappeared.
    Dry Valley, less fleet, followed them nearly to the pickets.  Checking  his 
useless pursuit, he rounded a bush, dropped  his  whip  and  stood,  voiceless, 
motionless, the capacity of his powers consumed by the  act  of  breathing  and 
preserving the perpendicular.
    Behind the bush stood Panchita O'Brien, scorning to fly. She was  nineteen, 
the oldest of the raiders. Her night-black hair was gathered  back  in  a  wild 
mass and tied with a scarlet ribbon. She stood, with reluctant feet, yet nearer 
the brook than to the river; for childhood had environed and detained her.
    She looked at Dry Valley Johnson for a moment with  magnificent  insolence, 
and before his eyes slowly crunched a luscious berry between her  white  teeth. 
Then she turned and walked slowly  to  the  fence  with  a  swaying,  conscious 
motion, such as a duchess might make use of in leading a promenade.  There  she 
turned again and grilled Dry Valley Johnson once more in the dark flame of  her 
audacious eyes, laughed a trifle school-girlishly,  and  twisted  herself  with 
pantherish quickness between the pickets to the O'Brien side of the wild  gourd
vine.
    Dry Valley picked up his whip and went into his house. He  stumbled  as  he 
went up the two wooden steps. The old Mexican woman who cooked  his  meals  and 
swept his house called him to supper as he went through the rooms.  Dry  Valley 
went on, stumbled down the front steps, out the gate and  down  the  road  into 
a mesquite thicket at  the  edge  of  town.  He  sat  down  in  the  grass  and 
laboriously plucked the spines from a prickly pear, one by one.  This  was  his 
attitude of thought, acquired in the days when his problems were only those  of 
wind and wool and water.
    A thing had happened to the man - a thing that, if you  are  eligible,  you 
must pray may pass you by. He had become enveloped in the Indian Summer of  the 
Soul.
    Dry Valley had had no youth. Even his childhood had been one of dignity and 
seriousness. At six he had viewed the frivolous gambols of  the  lambs  on  his 
father's ranch with silent disapproval. His  life  as  a  young  man  had  been 
wasted. The divine fires and impulses, the glorious exaltations  and  despairs, 
the glow and enchantment of youth had passed above his head. Never a thrill  of 
Romeo had he known; he was but a melancholy Jaques of the forest with  a  ruder 
philosophy, lacking the bitter-sweet flavour of experience  that  tempered  the 
veteran years of the rugged ranger of Arden. And now in  his  sere  and  yellow 
leaf one scornful look from the  eyes  of  Panchita  O'Brien  had  flooded  the 
autumnal landscape with a tardy and delusive summer heat.
    But a sheepman is a hardy animal. Dry Valley Johnson had weathered too many 
northers to turn his back on a late summer, spiritual or real.  Old?  He  would 
show them.
    By the next mail went an order to San Antonio for an outfit of  the  latest 
clothes, colours and styles and prices no object. The next day went the  recipe 
for the hair restorer clipped from a  newspaper;  for  Dry  Valley's  sunburned 
auburn hair was beginning to turn silvery above his ears.
    Dry Valley kept indoors closely for a  week  except  for  frequent  sallies 
after youthful strawberry snatchers.  Then,  a  few  days  later,  he  suddenly 
emerged brilliantly radiant  in  the  hectic  glow  of  his  belated  midsummer 
madness.
    A jay-bird-blue tennis suit covered him outwardly, almost  as  far  as  his 
wrists and ankles. His shirt was ox-blood; his  collar  winged  and  tall;  his 
necktie a floating oriflamme; his shoes a  venomous  bright  tan,  pointed  and 
shaped on penitential lasts. A little  flat  straw  hat  with  a  striped  band 
desecrated his weather-beaten head. Lemon-coloured  kid  gloves  protected  his 
oak-tough hands from the benignant May sunshine.  This  sad  and  optic-smiting 
creature teetered out of its den, smiling foolishly and  smoothing  its  gloves 
for men and angels to see. To such a pass had Dry Valley Johnson  been  brought 
by Cupid, who always shoots game that is out of season with an arrow  from  the 
quiver of Momus. Reconstructing mythology, he had  risen,  a  prismatic  macaw, 
from the ashes of the grey-brown phoenix that had folded  its  tired  wings  to 
roost under the trees of Santa Rosa.
    Dry Valley paused in the street to allow Santa Rosans within sight  of  him 
to be stunned; and then deliberately and slowly, as his shoes required, entered 
Mrs. O'Brien's gate.
    Not until the eleven months' drought did Santa Rosa cease talking about Dry 
Valley Johnson's courtship  of  Panchita  O'Brien.  It  was  an  unclassifiable 
procedure; something like a combination of cake-walking, deaf-and-dumb oratory, 
postage stamp flirtation and parlour charades. It lasted  two  weeks  and  then 
came to a sudden end.
    Of course  Mrs.  O'Brien  favoured  the  match  as  soon  as  Dry  Valley's 
intentions were disclosed. Being the mother of a  woman  child,  and  therefore 
a charter member of the Ancient Order of the Rat-trap, she joyfully decked  out 
Panchita for the sacrifice. The girl was  temporarily  dazzled  by  having  her 
dresses lengthened and her hair piled up on her head, and came near  forgetting 
that she was only a slice of cheese. It was nice, too, to have as good a  match 
as Mr. Johnson paying you attentions and to see the other girls fluttering  the 
curtains at their windows to see you go by with him.
    Dry Valley bought a buggy with yellow wheels and  a  fine  trotter  in  San 
Antonio. Every day he drove out with Panchita. He was never seen  to  speak  to 
her when they were walking or driving. The consciousness of  his  clothes  kept 
his mind busy; the knowledge that he could say nothing  of  interest  kept  him 
dumb; the feeling that Panchita was there kept him happy.
    He took her to parties and dances, and to church.  He  tried - oh,  no  man 
ever tried so hard to be young as Dry Valley did. He could not  dance;  but  he 
invented a smile which he wore on these joyous occasions, a smile that, in him, 
was as great a concession to mirth and gaiety as turning hand-springs would  be 
in another. He began to seek the company of the young men in the town - even of 
the boys.  They  accepted  him  as  a  decided  damper,  for  his  attempts  at 
sportiveness were so forced that they might as well have essayed their games in 
a cathedral. Neither he nor any other could estimate what progress he had  made 
with Panchita.
    The end came suddenly in one day, as often disappears the  false  afterglow 
before a November sky and wind.
    Dry Valley was to call for the girl one afternoon at six  for  a  walk.  An 
afternoon walk in Santa Rosa was a feature of social life that called  for  the 
pink of one's wardrobe. So Dry Valley began gorgeously to array himself; and so 
early that he finished early, and went over  to  the  O'Brien  cottage.  As  he 
neared the porch on the crooked walk from the gate he heard sounds  of  revelry 
within. He stopped and looked through the honeysuckle vines in the open door.
    Panchita was amusing her younger brothers and sisters.  She  wore  a  man's 
clothes - no doubt those of the late Mr. O'Brien. On her head was the  smallest 
brother's straw hat decorated with an ink-striped paper band. On her hands were 
flapping yellow cloth gloves, roughly cut out and sewn for the masquerade.  The 
same material covered her shoes, giving them the semblance of tan leather. High 
collar and flowing necktie were not omitted.
    Panchita was an actress. Dry Valley saw his affectedly youthful  gait,  his 
limp where the right shoe hurt him, his forced smile, his awkward simulation of 
a gallant air, all reproduced with  startling  fidelity.  For  the  first  time 
a mirror had been held up to him. The corroboration of one  of  the  youngsters 
calling, "Mamma, come and see Pancha do like Mr. Johnson," was not needed.
    As softly as the caricatured tans would permit, Dry Valley tiptoed back  to 
the gate and home again.
    Twenty minutes after the time  appointed  for  the  walk  Panchita  tripped 
demurely out of her gate in a  thin,  trim  white  lawn  and  sailor  hat.  She 
strolled up the sidewalk and slowed her steps at Dry Valley's gate, her  manner 
expressing wonder at his unusual delinquency.
    Then out of his door and  down  the  walk  strode - not  the  polychromatic 
victim of a lost summertime, but the sheepman, rehabilitated. He wore  his  old 
grey woolen shirt, open at the throat, his brown duck trousers stuffed into his 
run-over boots, and his white felt sombrero on the back  of  his  head.  Twenty 
years or fifty he might look; Dry Valley cared not. His  light  blue  eyes  met 
Panchita's dark ones with a cold flash in them. He came as far as the gate.  He 
pointed with his long arm to her house.
    "Go home," said Dry Valley. "Go home to your  mother.  I  wonder  lightnin' 
don't strike a fool like me. Go home and play in the sand. What  business  have 
you got cavortin' around with grown men? I reckon I was  locoed  to  be  makin' 
a he poll-parrot out of myself for a kid like you. Go home and don't let me see 
you no more. Why I done it, will somebody tell me? Go home, and let me try  and 
forget it."
    Panchita obeyed and walked slowly toward her home, saying nothing. For some 
distance she kept her head turned and her large eyes fixed intrepidly upon  Dry 
Valley's. At her gate she stood for a moment looking  back  at  him,  then  ran 
suddenly and swiftly into the house. 
    Old Antonia was building a fire in the kitchen stove. Dry Valley stopped at 
the door and laughed harshly.
    "I'm a pretty looking old rhinoceros to be gettin' stuck on a kid, ain't I, 
'Tonia?" said he.
    "Not verree good thing," agreed Antonia, sagely, "for too much old  man  to 
likee muchacha."
    "You bet it ain't," said Dry Valley, grimly. "It's  dum  foolishness;  and, 
besides, it hurts."
    He brought at one armful the regalia of his  aberration - the  blue  tennis 
suit, shoes, hat, gloves and all, and threw them in a pile at Antonia's feet.
    "Give them to your old man," said he, "to hunt antelope in."
    Just as the first star presided palely over the twilight Dry Valley got his 
biggest strawberry book and sat on the back steps to  catch  the  last  of  the 
reading light. He thought he saw the figure of someone in his strawberry patch. 
He laid aside the book, got his whip and hurried forth to see.
    It was Panchita. She had slipped through the picket fence and was  half-way 
across the patch. She stopped when she  saw  him  and  looked  at  him  without 
wavering.
    A sudden rage - a humiliating flush of unreasoning  wrath - came  over  Dry 
Valley. For this child he had made himself a motley to the view. He  had  tried 
to bribe Time to turn backward for himself; he had - been made a  fool  of.  At 
last he had seen his folly. There was a gulf between him and youth  over  which 
he could not build a bridge even with yellow gloves to protect his  hands.  And 
the sight of his torment coming to pester him with her elfin pranks - coming to 
plunder his strawberry vines like  a  mischievous  schoolboy - roused  all  his 
anger.
    "I told you to keep away from here," said Dry  Valley.  "Go  back  to  your 
home."
    Panchita moved slowly toward him.
    Dry Valley cracked his whip.
    "Go back home," said Dry Valley, savagely, "and play theatricals some more. 
You'd make a fine man. You've made a fine one of me."
    She came a step nearer, silent, and  with  that  strange,  defiant,  steady 
shine in her eyes that had always puzzled him. Now it stirred his wrath.
    His whiplash whistled through the air. He saw a red  streak  suddenly  come 
out through her white dress above her knee where it had struck.
    Without flinching and with the same  unchanging  dark  glow  in  her  eyes, 
Panchita came steadily toward him through the strawberry  vines.  Dry  Valley's 
trembling hand released his whip handle. When within a  yard  of  him  Panchita 
stretched out her arms.
    "God, kid!" stammered Dry Valley, "do you mean - ?"
    But the seasons are versatile; and it may have been Springtime, after  all, 
instead of Indian Summer, that struck Dry Valley Johnson.

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