Holding Up a Train Page #2

"Holding Up a Train" is a short story by O. Henry that revolves around a clever and audacious train robbery. The tale follows a bandit who orchestrates the heist with unexpected twists and turns, showcasing O. Henry's signature wit and knack for surprise endings. As the story unfolds, themes of morality, love, and irony emerge, providing readers with both entertainment and thought-provoking insights into human nature. With its engaging characters and clever plot, the story exemplifies O. Henry's mastery of the short story format.

• Short story

								

already been greatly disturbed by the shouting and firing. Never in all
my life have I met with a finer instance of official dignity and
reliance upon the power of Mr. Pullman’s great name. I jabbed my
six-shooter so hard against Mr. Conductor’s front that I afterward
found one of his vest buttons so firmly wedged in the end of the barrel
that I had to shoot it out. He just shut up like a weak-springed knife
and rolled down the car steps.

I opened the door of the sleeper and stepped inside. A big, fat old man
came wabbling up to me, puffing and blowing. He had one coat-sleeve on
and was trying to put his vest on over that. I don’t know who he
thought I was.

“Young man, young man,” says he, “you must keep cool and not get
excited. Above everything, keep cool.”

“I can’t,” says I. “Excitement’s just eating me up.” And then I let out
a yell and turned loose my forty-five through the skylight.

That old man tried to dive into one of the lower berths, but a screech
came out of it and a bare foot that took him in the bread-basket and
landed him on the floor. I saw Jim coming in the other door, and I
hollered for everybody to climb out and line up.

They commenced to scramble down, and for a while we had a three-ringed
circus. The men looked as frightened and tame as a lot of rabbits in a
deep snow. They had on, on an average, about a quarter of a suit of
clothes and one shoe apiece. One chap was sitting on the floor of the
aisle, looking as if he were working a hard sum in arithmetic. He was
trying, very solemn, to pull a lady’s number two shoe on his number
nine foot.

The ladies didn’t stop to dress. They were so curious to see a real,
live train robber, bless ’em, that they just wrapped blankets and
sheets around themselves and came out, squeaky and fidgety looking.
They always show more curiosity and sand than the men do.

We got them all lined up and pretty quiet, and I went through the
bunch. I found very little on them—I mean in the way of valuables. One
man in the line was a sight. He was one of those big, overgrown, solemn
snoozers that sit on the platform at lectures and look wise. Before
crawling out he had managed to put on his long, frock-tailed coat and
his high silk hat. The rest of him was nothing but pajamas and bunions.
When I dug into that Prince Albert, I expected to drag out at least a
block of gold mine stock or an armful of Government bonds, but all I
found was a little boy’s French harp about four inches long. What it
was there for, I don’t know. I felt a little mad because he had fooled
me so. I stuck the harp up against his mouth.

“If you can’t pay—play,” I says.

“I can’t play,” says he.

“Then learn right off quick,” says I, letting him smell the end of my
gun-barrel.

He caught hold of the harp, turned red as a beet, and commenced to
blow. He blew a dinky little tune I remembered hearing when I was a
kid:

Prettiest little gal in the country—oh!
Mammy and Daddy told me so.

I made him keep on playing it all the time we were in the car. Now and
then he’d get weak and off the key, and I’d turn my gun on him and ask
what was the matter with that little gal, and whether he had any
intention of going back on her, which would make him start up again
like sixty. I think that old boy standing there in his silk hat and
bare feet, playing his little French harp, was the funniest sight I
ever saw. One little red-headed woman in the line broke out laughing at
him. You could have heard her in the next car.

Then Jim held them steady while I searched the berths. I grappled
around in those beds and filled a pillow-case with the strangest
assortment of stuff you ever saw. Now and then I’d come across a little
pop-gun pistol, just about right for plugging teeth with, which I’d
throw out the window. When I finished with the collection, I dumped the
pillow-case load in the middle of the aisle. There were a good many
watches, bracelets, rings, and pocket-books, with a sprinkling of false
teeth, whiskey flasks, face-powder boxes, chocolate caramels, and heads
of hair of various colours and lengths. There were also about a dozen
ladies’ stockings into which jewellery, watches, and rolls of bills had
been stuffed and then wadded up tight and stuck under the mattresses. I
offered to return what I called the “scalps,” saying that we were not
Indians on the war-path, but none of the ladies seemed to know to whom
the hair belonged.

One of the women—and a good-looker she was—wrapped in a striped
blanket, saw me pick up one of the stockings that was pretty chunky and
heavy about the toe, and she snapped out:

“That’s mine, sir. You’re not in the business of robbing women, are
you?”

Now, as this was our first hold-up, we hadn’t agreed upon any code of
ethics, so I hardly knew what to answer. But, anyway, I replied: “Well,
not as a specialty. If this contains your personal property you can
have it back.”

“It just does,” she declared eagerly, and reached out her hand for it.

“You’ll excuse my taking a look at the contents,” I said, holding the
stocking up by the toe. Out dumped a big gent’s gold watch, worth two
hundred, a gent’s leather pocket-book that we afterward found to
contain six hundred dollars, a 32-calibre revolver; and the only thing
of the lot that could have been a lady’s personal property was a silver
bracelet worth about fifty cents.

I said: “Madame, here’s your property,” and handed her the bracelet.
“Now,” I went on, “how can you expect us to act square with you when
you try to deceive us in this manner? I’m surprised at such conduct.”

The young woman flushed up as if she had been caught doing something
dishonest. Some other woman down the line called out: “The mean thing!”
I never knew whether she meant the other lady or me.

When we finished our job we ordered everybody back to bed, told ’em
good night very politely at the door, and left. We rode forty miles
before daylight and then divided the stuff. Each one of us got
$1,752.85 in money. We lumped the jewellery around. Then we scattered,
each man for himself.

That was my first train robbery, and it was about as easily done as any
of the ones that followed. But that was the last and only time I ever
went through the passengers. I don’t like that part of the business.
Afterward I stuck strictly to the express car. During the next eight
years I handled a good deal of money.

The best haul I made was just seven years after the first one. We found
out about a train that was going to bring out a lot of money to pay off
the soldiers at a Government post. We stuck that train up in broad
daylight. Five of us lay in the sand hills near a little station. Ten
soldiers were guarding the money on the train, but they might just as
well have been at home on a furlough. We didn’t even allow them to
stick their heads out the windows to see the fun. We had no trouble at
all in getting the money, which was all in gold. Of course, a big howl
was raised at the time about the robbery. It was Government stuff, and
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