The Hiding Of Black Bill

O Henry

A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by

flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At

his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They

had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat-- seamy on

both sides.

"Ain't seen you in about four years, Ham," said the seedy man. "Which way you been

travelling?"

"Texas," said the red-faced man. "It was too cold in Alaska for me. And I found it warm

deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a peach orchard. It was so much like a

gentleman's private estate that every minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run

out and bite you. But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a ranch-

house. It was a little one, about as big as an elevated- railroad station.

"There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and a pink handkerchief

around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front of the door.

"'Greetings,' says I. 'Any refreshment, welcome, emoluments, or even work for a

comparative stranger?'

"'Oh, come in,' says he, in a refined tone. 'Sit down on that stool, please. I didn't hear

your horse coming.'

"'For a time,' says I. 'This is a rather quiet section of the country, isn't it?'

"'It is,' says he. 'Sometimes--so I have been told--one sees no human being pass for

weeks at a time. I've been here only a month. I bought the ranch from an old settler who

wanted to move farther west.'

"'It suits me,' says I. 'Quiet and retirement are good for a man sometimes. And I need a

job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging,

and play the piano.'

"'Can you herd sheep ?' asks the little ranch-man.

"'Do you mean have I heard sheep?' says I.

"'Can you herd 'em--take charge of a flock of 'em ?' says he.

"'Oh,' says I, 'now I understand. You mean chase 'em around and bark at 'em like collie

dogs. Well, I might,' says I. 'I've never exactly done any sheep-herding, but I've often

seen 'em from car windows masticating daisies, and they don't look dangerous.'

"'I'm short a herder,' says the ranchman. 'You never can depend on the Mexicans. I've

"So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of muttons from the

corral to about two miles out and let 'em graze on a little hillside on the prairie. He gives

me a lot of instructions about not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and

driving 'em down to a water-hole to drink at noon.

"'I'll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the buckboard before night,'

says he.

"'Fine,' says I. 'And don't forget the rations. Nor the camping outfit. And be sure to bring

the tent. Your name's Zollicoffer, ain't it?"

"'My name,' says he, 'is Henry Ogden.'

"'All right, Mr. Ogden,' says I. 'Mine is Mr. Percival Saint Clair.'

"The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial muttons, I walked

over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door.

"'Mr. Ogden,' says I, 'you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are all very well to dot

the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton suitings for man, but for table-talk and

fireside companions they rank along with five-o'clock teazers. If you've got a deck of

cards, or a parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get 'em out, and let's get on a mental

basis. I've got to do something in an intellectual line, if it's only to knock somebody's

brains out.'

"This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger- rings and a big

gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was calm, and his nose-spectacles was

kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee, an outlaw hung for murdering six men, who

was a dead ringer for him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken

to be his brother. I didn't care much for him either way; what I wanted was some

fellowship and communion with holy saints or lost sinners--anything sheepless would

do.

"'Well, Saint Clair,' says he, laying down the book he was reading, 'I guess it must be

pretty lonesome for you at first. And I don't deny that it's monotonous for me. Are you

sure you corralled your sheep so they won't stray out ?

"'They're shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire murderer,' says I. 'And I'll be back

bored to turn his head to look at a $3,000,000 fire or Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But

let him herd sheep for a spell, and you'll see him splitting his ribs laughing at 'Curfew

Shall Not Ring To-night,' or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.

sheep.

hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was shot through the shoulder, and about

$15,000 in currency taken. And it's said that only one man did the job.'

"'Seems to me I do,' says I. 'But such things happen so often they don't linger long in the

"'I imagine,' says I, after ingurgitating another modicum of the royal boose, 'that it

wouldn't be at all a disingenuous idea for a train robber to run down into this part of the

country to hide for a spell. A sheep-ranch, now,' says I, would be the finest kind of a

place. Who'd ever expect to find such a desperate character among these song- birds and

muttons and wild flowers? And, by the way,' says I, kind of looking H. Ogden over, 'was

there any description mentioned of this single-handed terror? Was his lineaments or

height and thickness or teeth fillings or style of habiliments set forth in print ?'

"'Why, no,' says Ogden; 'they say nobody got a good sight of him because he wore a

mask. But they know it was a train-robber called Black Bill, because he always works

alone and because he dropped a handkerchief in the express-car that had his name on it.'

"'All right,' says I. 'I approve of Black Bill's retreat to the sheep-ranges. I guess they

won't find him.'

"'There's one thousand dollars reward for his capture,' says Ogden.

"'I don't need that kind of money,' says I, looking Mr. Sheepman straight in the eye. 'The

twelve dollars a month you pay me is enough. I need a rest, and I can save up until I get

enough to pay my fare to Texarkana, where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,' I

goes on, looking significantly at Ogden, was to have come down this way--say, a month

ago--and bought a little sheep-ranch and--'

"'Stop,' says Ogden, getting out of his chair and looking pretty vicious. 'Do you mean to

"Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds, and then he laughs, amused.

"'You'll do, Saint Clair,' says he. 'If I was Black Bill I wouldn't be afraid to trust you.

Let's have a game or two of seven-up to- night. That is, if you don't mind playing with a

"'I've told you,' says I, 'my oral sentiments, and there's no strings to 'em.'

"While I was shuffling after the first hand, I asks Ogden, as if the idea was a kind of a

casualty, where he was from.

"'Oh,' says he, 'from the Mississippi Valley.'

"'That's a nice little place,' says I. 'I've often stopped over there. But didn't you find the

name of your aunt that carried off the Cumberland Presbyterian minister. It don't matter.

I just want you to know you are safe in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don't play

hearts on spades, and don't get nervous.'

"'Still harping,' says Ogden, laughing again. 'Don't you suppose that if I was Black Bill

and thought you suspected me, I'd put a Winchester bullet into you and stop my

nervousness, if I had any?'

"'Not any,' says I. 'A man who's got the nerve to hold up a train single-handed wouldn't

do a trick like that. I've knocked about enough to know that them are the kind of men

who put a value on a friend. Not that I can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,'

says I, 'being only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious circumstances we

might have been.'

"'Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,' says Ogden, 'and cut for deal.'

"About four days afterward, while my muttons was nooning on the water- hole and I

deep in the interstices of making a pot of coffee, up rides softly on the grass a

mysterious person in the garb of the being he wished to represent. He was dressed

somewhere between a Kansas City detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of

Baton Rouge. His chin and eye wasn't molded on fighting lines, so I knew he was only a

scout.

"'Herdin' sheep?' he asks me.

"And then he asks me who I was working for, and I shows him Rancho Chiquito, two

miles away, in the shadow of a low hill, and he tells me he's a deputy sheriff.

"'There's a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to be somewhere in these parts,' says

heard of any strangers around here during the past month?'

ranch, on the Frio.'

"'What do you know about him?' asks the deputy.

"'What kind of a looking man is he ?' asks the deputy again.

"'Oh,' says I, ' a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long whiskers and blue specs. I don't

think he knows a sheep from a ground-squirrel. I guess old George soaked him pretty

well on the deal,' says I.

"After indulging himself in a lot more non-communicative information and two-thirds

of my dinner, the deputy rides away.

"That night I mentions the matter to Ogden. "'They're drawing the tendrils of the octopus

around Black Bill,' says I. And then I told him about the deputy sheriff, and how I'd

described him to the deputy, and what the deputy said about the matter.

"'Oh, well,' says Ogden, 'let's don't borrow any of Black Bill's troubles. We've a few of

our own. Get the Bourbon out of the cupboard and we'll drink to his health--unless,' says

he, with his little cackling laugh, 'you're prejudiced against train-robbers.'

"'I'll drink,' says I, 'to any man who's a friend to a friend. And I believe that Black Bill,' I

goes on, 'would be that. So here's to Black Bill, and may he have good luck.'

"And both of us drank.

"About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The sheep had to be driven up to the

ranch, and a lot of frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip the fur off of them with back-

musings. 'Imperial Caesar,' says I, 'asleep in such a way, might shut his mouth and keep

the wind away.'

A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is all his brain,

enemies, and more so of his friends. And he's about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning

against the Metropolitan Opera House at 12.30 A.M. dreaming of the plains of Arabia.

better for all hands for her to be that way.

"Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in to be comfortable

while he was taking his nap. He had some books on his table on indigenous subjects,

to the point.

"They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I set apart with my eye

the one I opinionated to be the boss muck-raker of this law-and-order cavalry.

"'Good-evening, gents,' says I. 'Won't you 'light, and tie your horses?'

"The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in it seems to cover

my whole front elevation.

"'Don't you move your hands none,' says he, 'till you and me indulge in a adequate

amount of necessary conversation.'

"'I will not,' says I. 'I am no deaf-mute, and therefore will not have to disobey your

injunctions in replying.'

"'We are on the lookout,' says he, 'for Black Bill, the man that held up the Katy for

$15,000 in May. We are searching the ranches and everybody on 'em. What is your

name, and what do you do on this ranch?'

"'Captain,' says I, 'Percival Saint Clair is my occupation, and my name is sheep-herder.

I've got my flock of veals--no, muttons--penned here to-night. The shearers are coming

to-morrow to give them a hair- cut--with baa-a-rum, I suppose.'

"'Where's the boss of this ranch?' the captain of the gang asks me.

cerulean blue sky.

"'If you know anything about the locality, disposition, or secretiveness of this here Black

Bill,' says he, in a severe dialect, 'you are amiable to the law in not reporting it.'

"'I heard a fence-rider say,' says I, in a desultory kind of voice, 'that a Mexican told a

cowboy named Jake over at Pidgin's store on the Nueces that he heard that Black Bill

"'Tell you what I'll do, Tight Mouth,' says the captain, after looking me over for

bargains. 'If you put us on so we can scoop Black Bill, I'll pay you a hundred dollars out

of my own--out of our own--pockets. That's liberal,' says he. 'You ain't entitled to

"'I am mighty poor and low down in the world,' says I. 'I am working for twelve dollars a

month trying to keep a lot of animals together whose only thought seems to be to get

asunder. Although,' says I, 'I regard myself as some better than the State of South

Dakota, it's a come-down to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form

of chops. I'm pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled ambitions and rum and

a kind of cocktail they make along the P. R. R. all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati--

dry gin, French vermouth, one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If

you're ever up that way, don't fail to let one try you. And, again,' says I, 'I have never yet

went back on a friend. I've stayed by 'em when they had plenty, and when adversity's

overtaken me I've never forsook 'em.

"'But,' I goes on, 'this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve dollars a month is only

bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not consider brown beans and corn-bread the

food of friendship. I am a poor man,' says I, 'and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana.

You will find Black Bill,' says I, 'lying asleep in this house on a cot in the room to your

right. He's the man you want, as I know from his words and conversation. He was in a

way a friend,' I explains, 'and if I was the man I once was the entire product of the mines

of Gondola would not have tempted me to betray him. But,' says I, 'every week half of

the beans was wormy, and not nigh enough wood in camp.

"'Better go in careful, gentlemen,' says I. 'He seems impatient at times, and when you

think of his late professional pursuits one would look for abrupt actions if he was come

upon sudden.'

"'What does this mean?' he says, after they had him down.

"'You're scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,' says the captain. 'That's all.'

"'It's an outrage,' says H. Ogden, madder yet.

a law against monkeying with express packages.'

"And he sits on H. Ogden's stomach and goes through his pockets symptomatically and

careful.

"'I'll make you perspire for this,' says Ogden, perspiring some himself. 'I can prove who I

"H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no more after they have taken the

money off of him.

"'A well-greased idea,' says the sheriff captain, admiring, 'to slip off down here and buy

a little sheep-ranch where the hand of man is seldom heard. It was the slickest hide-out I

ever see,' says the captain.