The Call of the Tame

"The Call of the Tame" by O. Henry is a charming short story that explores themes of love, longing, and the clash between urban life and the desire for freedom. Set against the backdrop of a bustling city, the narrative follows the unlikely romance between a sophisticated woman and a man longing for a simpler, more authentic existence. O. Henry's trademark wit and intricate storytelling come alive as he delves into the characters' aspirations, ultimately illustrating how love can bridge the gap between contrasting worlds. The story captures the essence of human connection and the innate desire to escape the confines of modernity for a taste of the wild.

• Short story

								
When the inauguration was accomplished—the proceedings were made smooth
by the presence of the Rough Riders—it is well known that a herd of
those competent and loyal ex-warriors paid a visit to the big city. The
newspaper reporters dug out of their trunks the old broad-brimmed hats
and leather belts that they wear to North Beach fish fries, and mixed
with the visitors. No damage was done beyond the employment of the
wonderful plural “tenderfeet” in each of the scribe’s stories. The
Westerners mildly contemplated the skyscrapers as high as the third
story, yawned at Broadway, hunched down in the big chairs in hotel
corridors, and altogether looked as bored and dejected as a member of
Ye Ancient and Honorable Artillery separated during a sham battle from
his valet.

Out of this sightseeing delegations of good King Teddy’s Gentlemen of
the Royal Bear-hounds dropped one Greenbrier Nye, of Pin Feather, Ariz.

The daily cyclone of Sixth Avenue’s rush hour swept him away from the
company of his pardners true. The dust from a thousand rustling skirts
filled his eyes. The mighty roar of trains rushing across the sky
deafened him. The lightning-flash of twice ten hundred beaming eyes
confused his vision.

The storm was so sudden and tremendous that Greenbrier’s first impulse
was to lie down and grab a root. And then he remembered that the
disturbance was human, and not elemental; and he backed out of it with
a grin into a doorway.

The reporters had written that but for the wide-brimmed hats the West
was not visible upon these gauchos of the North. Heaven sharpen their
eyes! The suit of black diagonal, wrinkled in impossible places; the
bright blue four-in-hand, factory tied; the low, turned-down collar,
pattern of the days of Seymour and Blair, white glazed as the letters
on the window of the open-day-and-night-except-Sunday restaurants; the
out-curve at the knees from the saddle grip; the peculiar spread of the
half-closed right thumb and fingers from the stiff hold upon the
circling lasso; the deeply absorbed weather tan that the hottest sun of
Cape May can never equal; the seldom-winking blue eyes that
unconsciously divided the rushing crowds into fours, as though they
were being counted out of a corral; the segregated loneliness and
solemnity of expression, as of an Emperor or of one whose horizons have
not intruded upon him nearer than a day’s ride—these brands of the West
were set upon Greenbrier Nye. Oh, yes; he wore a broad-brimmed hat,
gentle reader—just like those the Madison Square Post Office mail
carriers wear when they go up to Bronx Park on Sunday afternoons.

Suddenly Greenbrier Nye jumped into the drifting herd of metropolitan
cattle, seized upon a man, dragged him out of the stream and gave him a
buffet upon his collar-bone that sent him reeling against a wall.

The victim recovered his hat, with the angry look of a New Yorker who
has suffered an outrage and intends to write to the Trib. about it. But
he looked at his assailant, and knew that the blow was in consideration
of love and affection after the manner of the West, which greets its
friends with contumely and uproar and pounding fists, and receives its
enemies in decorum and order, such as the judicious placing of the
welcoming bullet demands.

“God in the mountains!” cried Greenbrier, holding fast to the foreleg
of his cull. “Can this be Longhorn Merritt?”

The other man was—oh, look on Broadway any day for the pattern—business
man—latest rolled-brim derby—good barber, business, digestion and
tailor.

“Greenbrier Nye!” he exclaimed, grasping the hand that had smitten him.
“My dear fellow! So glad to see you! How did you come to—oh, to be
sure—the inaugural ceremonies—I remember you joined the Rough Riders.
You must come and have luncheon with me, of course.”

Greenbrier pinned him sadly but firmly to the wall with a hand the
size, shape and color of a McClellan saddle.

“Longy,” he said, in a melancholy voice that disturbed traffic, “what
have they been doing to you? You act just like a citizen. They done
made you into an inmate of the city directory. You never made no such
Johnny Branch execration of yourself as that out on the Gila. ‘Come and
have lunching with me!’ You never defined grub by any such terms of
reproach in them days.”

“I’ve been living in New York seven years,” said Merritt. “It’s been
eight since we punched cows together in Old Man Garcia’s outfit. Well,
let’s go to a café, anyhow. It sounds good to hear it called ‘grub?’
again.”

They picked their way through the crowd to a hotel, and drifted, as by
a natural law, to the bar.

“Speak up,” invited Greenbrier.

“A dry Martini,” said Merritt.

“Oh, Lord!” cried Greenbrier; “and yet me and you once saw the same
pink Gila monsters crawling up the walls of the same hotel in Cañon
Diablo! A dry—but let that pass. Whiskey straight—and they’re on you.”

Merritt smiled, and paid.

They lunched in a small extension of the dining room that connected
with the café. Merritt dexterously diverted his friend’s choice, that
hovered over ham and eggs, to a purée of celery, a salmon cutlet, a
partridge pie and a desirable salad.

“On the day,” said Greenbrier, grieved and thunderous, “when I can’t
hold but one drink before eating when I meet a friend I ain’t seen in
eight years at a 2 by 4 table in a thirty-cent town at 1 o’clock on the
third day of the week, I want nine broncos to kick me forty times over
a 640-acre section of land. Get them statistics?”

“Right, old man,” laughed Merritt. “Waiter, bring an absinthe frappé
and—what’s yours, Greenbrier?”

“Whiskey straight,” mourned Nye. “Out of the neck of a bottle you used
to take it, Longy—straight out of the neck of a bottle on a galloping
pony—Arizona redeye, not this ab—oh, what’s the use? They’re on you.”

Merritt slipped the wine card under his glass.

“All right. I suppose you think I’m spoiled by the city. I’m as good a
Westerner as you are, Greenbrier; but, somehow, I can’t make up my mind
to go back out there. New York is comfortable—comfortable. I make a
good living, and I live it. No more wet blankets and riding herd in
snowstorms, and bacon and cold coffee, and blowouts once in six months
for me. I reckon I’ll hang out here in the future. We’ll take in the
theatre to-night, Greenbrier, and after that we’ll dine at—”

“I’ll tell you what you are, Merritt,” said Greenbrier, laying one
elbow in his salad and the other in his butter. “You are a
concentrated, effete, unconditional, short-sleeved, gotch-eared Miss
Sally Walker. God made you perpendicular and suitable to ride straddle
and use cuss words in the original. Wherefore you have suffered his
handiwork to elapse by removing yourself to New York and putting on
little shoes tied with strings, and making faces when you talk. I’ve
seen you rope and tie a steer in 42½. If you was to see one now you’d
write to the Police Commissioner about it. And these flapdoodle drinks
that you inoculate your system with—these little essences of cowslip
with acorns in ’em, and paregoric flip—they ain’t anyways in assent

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