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  .., 2026.



O. Henry  . 

Red Chief  



It looked like a good deal... But wait, let me finish.        ,   .

We were there, in the South, in Alabama, when this very idea about child stealing hit us.    ,  ,  ,    ,  ,    . It happened, as Bill Driscoll always put it later, in a moment of temporary clouding of our minds.  ,      ,      . But this only came to light later.     .

So, there was this little town there - flat as a pancake, and, of course, called nothing less than Summit. ,      ,  , , ,   ,  .

Bill and I had between us about six hundred dollars, and we needed exactly two thousand more to start a scam involving city lots in Western Illinois.           ,        ,           . We thought it over while sitting on the hotel porch.    ,    . The love of one's young, we reasoned, must be especially strong in such half-city, half-country places.    ,  ,       , . For this reason, and for other reasons, the project of kidnapping a young one here was a thousand times more reasonable than within the reach of the newspapers, which immediately sent reporters in civilian clothes to the scene of the crime. ,      ,        ,     ,          . And Sammit, we knew, could send nothing more terrible after us than a couple of constables and perhaps a few lousy bloodhounds and a few abusive articles in the Farmer's Weekly.  ,  ,          ,    ,  ,           . In short, all seemed to be going well. , , ,  .

We had chosen as our victim the only child of a prominent citizen, a certain Ebenezer Dorset.         ,   . The father was the most respected moneylender and spider in the city and a principled opponent of any collections and donations.               .

The boy was ten years old.    . His face was a bas-relief of freckles, and his hair was the color of the cover of one of those magazines you buy on the run from the kiosk at the station when you are running to catch the train.        ,      ,    ,         ,   ,    . Bill and I decided that Ebenezer would break his back and pay every cent of two thousand dollars for his son.    ,     ,          . But wait, let me finish the story.  ,     .

About two miles from the town there was a mountain covered with dense cedar thickets.       ,    . On the other side of this mountain there was a cave.        . In this cave we prepared a supply of provisions.        .

One fine evening we drove up to Ebenezer Dorset's house in a convertible.            . A boy was hanging around in the street and throwing stones at a cat sitting on the opposite fence.         ,    .

"Hey, kid!"  , ! said Bill.    . "Want to go for a ride and get a bag of candy on top of that?"            ?

The boy almost hit Bill in the eye with a piece of brick.          .

"That'll cost the old man another five hundred dollars," Bill said and got out of the convertible.        ,       .

The boy was struggling like a teddy bear.  ,   . Somehow we managed to stuff him into the bottom of the convertible, and we drove off. -       ,   . We took him to the cave and tied the horse in the cedar thickets.     ,      .

I returned the cabriolet to the next village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back.      ,   ,    ,    .

Bill was sticking pieces of plaster on his scratches and bruises.         . Behind the large stone that covered the entrance to the cave, a fire was burning.   ,    ,  . The boy, having stuck two feathers plucked from the tail of a buzzard into his red hair, was watching the coffee pot hanging over the fire. ,        ,       ,   . When I approached, he pointed to a club lying near him and said:   ,   ,      :

- Damned paleface!   ! How dare you approach the fire of the chief of the redskins, the terror of the valleys?        ,  ?

"He's calmed down at last," said Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining the bruises on his legs.  , , ,   ,        . "We were playing Indians.      . I'm an old trapper, and I'm a prisoner of a Red Chief!       ,   ! They're going to scalp me at daybreak.      . Damn him!   ! That boy can kick real good.    . Yes, sir, the boy was living it up. , ,       . It was so amusing for him, sleeping by the fire in the cave, that he completely forgot that he was a prisoner.            ,    ,   . He immediately christened me Snake Eyes, declared me a spy, and sentenced me to be roasted over a slow fire.       ,             . The execution was to take place at daybreak, when his brave warriors returned from the campaign.      ,       .

We sat down to dinner.   . The boy stuffed his mouth with bread and ham and began to chatter.          . He made a long speech, something like this:    , -   :

 That's a great thing!    ! I've never slept by a fire before.       . But I used to have a pet opossumwhat a laugh!          - ! I'm going on ten years old.    . I hate going to school.      . The rats ate sixteen eggs from Jimmy Talbot's speckled hen... Are there any real Indians in this woods?           -     ? Give me some more ham. -  . Is it true that the wind is caused by the trees shaking? ,     ,   ? We had five dogs.     . Why is your nose so red, Deerslayer?      , ? My father has a lot of money... And what about the stars, are they hot?        ,   ? I spanked him twice on Saturday, Ed Walker... I can't stand girls... You must try to catch toads with a string.       ,          . With your hands, you see, no, it's not possible. , , . Do bulls moo too?   ? No? ? Why are oranges round?   ? Do you have beds there, in the cave?     ,  ? Amos Murray has six fingers, by golly... A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't... How many units are there in a dozen?     , -   ,             ?

Every five minutes he would remember that he was a bloodthirsty Indian, grab his stick, which was supposed to be a gun, and tiptoe to the entrance of the cave to watch for any scouts of the hated palefaces.     ,    ,   ,     ,          ,      . From time to time he would let out a war cry that made old Deerslayer shudder.        ,     .

The boy caused Bill panic from the very beginning.        .




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