Waifs and Strays
By O. Henry and Mint Editions
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About this ebook
Originally published in 1917, Waifs and Strays is a premier selection of short stories released seven years after the author’s untimely death at age 47. The book contains 12 memorable tales including “Confessions of a Humorist," "The Detective Detector," and "The Sparrows in Madison Square." In Waifs and Strays, O. Henry brings humor to unconventional stories with unforgettable characters. With "The Detective Detector” he spoof’s the world’s most famous consultant Sherlock Holmes, while “Hearts and Hands” centers the unusual dynamic between a convict, a marshal and a beautiful woman. There’s also “The Cactus” in which a man recalls the errors of a past relationship and “A Little Talk About Mobs,” where two men debate New York’s gangster scene.Waifs and Strays is a compelling collection of stories that are humorous, thrilling and most importantly, entertaining. O. Henry creates diverse narratives that stir the imagination and keep readers guessing. Each tale is an attention-grabber full of memorable moments. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Waifs and Strays is both modern and readable.
Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.
With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.
O. Henry
O. Henry (1862-1910) was an American short story writer. Born and raised in North Carolina, O. Henry—whose real name was William Sydney Porter—moved to Texas in 1882 in search of work. He met and married Athol Estes in Austin, where he became well known as a musician and socialite. In 1888, Athol gave birth to a son who died soon after, and in 1889 a daughter named Margaret was born. Porter began working as a teller and bookkeeper at the First National Bank of Austin in 1890 and was fired four years later and accused of embezzlement. Afterward, he began publishing a satirical weekly called The Rolling Stone, but in 1895 he was arrested in Houston following an audit of his former employer. While waiting to stand trial, Henry fled to Honduras, where he lived for six months before returning to Texas to surrender himself upon hearing of Athol’s declining health. She died in July of 1897 from tuberculosis, and Porter served three years at the Ohio Penitentiary before moving to Pittsburgh to care for his daughter. While in prison, he began publishing stories under the pseudonym “O. Henry,” finding some success and launching a career that would blossom upon his release with such short stories as “The Gift of the Magi” (1905) and “The Ransom of Red Chief” (1907). He is recognized as one of America’s leading writers of short fiction, and the annual O. Henry Award—which has been won by such writers as William Faulkner, John Updike, and Eudora Welty—remains one of America’s most prestigious literary prizes.
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Waifs and Strays - O. Henry
THE RED ROSES OF TONIA
A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The south-bound from San Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that train was Tonia Weaver’s Easter hat.
Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard from the Espinosa Ranch to fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder and hands empty except for a cigarette. At the small station, Nopal, he had learned of the delayed train and, having no commands to wait, turned his ponies toward the ranch again.
Now, if one supposes that Easter, the Goddess of Spring, cares any more for the after-church parade on Fifth Avenue than she does for her loyal outfit of subjects that assemble at the meeting-house at Cactus, Tex., a mistake has been made. The wives and daughters of the ranchmen of the Frio country put forth Easter blossoms of new hats and gowns as faithfully as is done anywhere, and the Southwest is, for one day, a mingling of prickly pear, Paris, and paradise. And now it was Good Friday, and Tonia Weaver’s Easter hat blushed unseen in the desert air of an impotent express car, beyond the burned trestle. On Saturday noon the Rogers girls, from the Shoestring Ranch, and Ella Reeves, from the Anchor-O, and Mrs. Bennet and Ida, from Green Valley, would convene at the Espinosa and pick up Tonia. With their Easter hats and frocks carefully wrapped and bundled against the dust, the fair aggregation would then merrily jog the ten miles to Cactus, where on the morrow they would array themselves, subjugate man, do homage to Easter, and cause jealous agitation among the lilies of the field.
Tonia sat on the steps of the Espinosa ranch house flicking gloomily with a quirt at a tuft of curly mesquite. She displayed a frown and a contumelious lip, and endeavored to radiate an aura of disagreeableness and tragedy.
I hate railroads,
she announced positively. And men. Men pretend to run them. Can you give any excuse why a trestle should burn? Ida Bennet’s hat is to be trimmed with violets. I shall not go one step toward Cactus without a new hat. If I were a man I would get one.
Two men listened uneasily to this disparagement of their kind. One was Wells Pearson, foreman of the Mucho Calor cattle ranch. The other was Thompson Burrows, the prosperous sheepman from the Quintana Valley. Both thought Tonia Weaver adorable, especially when she railed at railroads and menaced men. Either would have given up his epidermis to make for her an Easter hat more cheerfully than the ostrich gives up his tip or the aigrette lays down its life. Neither possessed the ingenuity to conceive a means of supplying the sad deficiency against the coming Sabbath. Pearson’s deep brown face and sunburned light hair gave him the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth’s profound and insolvable melancholies. Tonia’s plight grieved him through and through. Thompson Burrows was the more skilled and pliable. He hailed from somewhere in the East originally; and he wore neckties and shoes, and was made dumb by woman’s presence.
The big water-hole on Sandy Creek,
said Pearson, scarcely hoping to make a hit, was filled up by that last rain.
Oh! Was it?
said Tonia sharply. Thank you for the information. I suppose a new hat is nothing to you, Mr. Pearson. I suppose you think a woman ought to wear an old Stetson five years without a change, as you do. If your old water-hole could have put out the fire on that trestle you might have some reason to talk about it.
I am deeply sorry,
said Burrows, warned by Pearson’s fate, that you failed to receive your hat, Miss Weaver—deeply sorry, indeed. If there was anything I could do—
Don’t bother,
interrupted Tonia, with sweet sarcasm. If there was anything you could do, you’d be doing it, of course. There isn’t.
Tonia paused. A sudden sparkle of hope had come into her eye. Her frown smoothed away. She had an inspiration.
There’s a store over at Lone Elm Crossing on the Nueces,
she said, that keeps hats. Eva Rogers got hers there. She said it was the latest style. It might have some left. But it’s twenty-eight miles to Lone Elm.
The spurs of two men who hastily arose jingled; and Tonia almost smiled. The Knights, then, were not all turned to dust; nor were their rowels rust.
Of course,
said Tonia, looking thoughtfully at a white gulf cloud sailing across the cerulean dome, nobody could ride to Lone Elm and back by the time the girls call by for me to-morrow. So, I reckon I’ll have to stay at home this Easter Sunday.
And then she smiled.
Well, Miss Tonia,
said Pearson, reaching for his hat, as guileful as a sleeping babe. I reckon I’ll be trotting along back to Mucho Calor. There’s some cutting out to be done on Dry Branch first thing in the morning; and me and Road Runner has got to be on hand. It’s too bad your hat got sidetracked. Maybe they’ll get that trestle mended yet in time for Easter.
I must be riding, too, Miss Tonia,
announced Burrows, looking at his watch. I declare, it’s nearly five o’clock! I must be out at my lambing camp in time to help pen those crazy ewes.
Tonia’s suitors seemed to have been smitten with a need for haste. They bade her a ceremonious farewell, and then shook each other’s hands with the elaborate and solemn courtesy of the Southwesterner.
Hope I’ll see you again soon, Mr. Pearson,
said Burrows.
Same here,
said the cowman, with the serious face of one whose friend goes upon a whaling voyage. Be gratified to see you ride over to Mucho Calor any time you strike that section of the range.
Pearson mounted Road Runner, the soundest cow-pony on the Frio, and let him pitch for a minute, as he always did on being mounted, even at the end of a day’s travel.
What kind of a hat was that, Miss Tonia,
he called, that you ordered from San Antone? I can’t help but be sorry about that hat.
A straw,
said Tonia; the latest shape, of course; trimmed with red roses. That’s what I like—red roses.
There’s no color more becoming to your complexion and hair,
said Burrows, admiringly.
It’s what I like,
said Tonia. And of all the flowers, give me red roses. Keep all the pinks and blues for yourself. But what’s the use, when trestles burn and leave you without anything? It’ll be a dry old Easter for me!
Pearson took off his hat and drove Road Runner at a gallop into the chaparral east of the Espinosa ranch house.
As his stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows’s long-legged sorrel struck out down the narrow stretch of open prairie to the southwest.
Tonia hung up her quirt and went into the sitting-room.
I’m mighty sorry, daughter, that you didn’t get your hat,
said her mother.
Oh, don’t worry, mother,
said Tonia, coolly. I’ll have a new hat, all right, in time to-morrow.
WHEN BURROWS REACHED THE END of the strip of prairie he pulled his sorrel to the right and let him pick his way daintily across a sacuista flat through which ran the ragged, dry bed of an arroyo. Then up a gravelly hill, matted with bush, the hoarse scrambled, and at length emerged, with a snort of satisfaction into a stretch of high, level prairie, grassy and dotted with the lighter green of mesquites in their fresh spring foliage. Always to the right Burrows bore, until in a little while he struck the old Indian trail that followed the Nueces southward, and that passed, twenty-eight miles to the southeast, through Lone Elm.
Here Burrows urged the sorrel into a steady lope. As he settled himself in the saddle for a long ride he heard the drumming of hoofs, the hollow thwack
of chaparral against wooden stirrups, the whoop of a Comanche; and Wells Pearson burst out of the brush at the right of the trail like a precocious yellow chick from a dark green Easter egg.
Except in the presence of awing femininity melancholy found no place in Pearson’s bosom. In Tonia’s presence his voice was as soft as a summer bullfrog’s in his reedy nest. Now, at his gleesome yawp, rabbits, a mile away, ducked their ears, and sensitive plants closed their fearful fronds.
Moved your lambing camp pretty far from the ranch, haven’t you, neighbor?
asked Pearson, as Road Runner fell in at the sorrel’s side.
Twenty-eight miles,
said Burrows, looking a little grim. Pearson’s laugh woke an owl one hour too early in his water-elm on