«The Ransom of Red Chief» and Other Stories / «Вождь краснокожих» и другие рассказы

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О. Генри. «The Ransom of Red Chief» and Other Stories / «Вождь краснокожих» и другие рассказы

The Ransom of Red Chief

One Dollar's Worth

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

The Whirligig of Life

The Roads We Take

The Gift of the Magi

The Octopus Marooned

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Voice of the City

The Trimmed Lamp

A Madison Square Arabian Night

The Purple Dress

Roads of Destiny

The Left Branch

The Right Branch

The Main Road

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Skylight Room

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

The Furnished Room

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

Lost on Dress Parade

Отрывок из книги

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama-Bill Driscoll and myself-when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment of temporary mental apparition”; but we didn't find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

.....

I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.

“You know, Sam,” says Bill, “I've stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood-in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's got me going. You won't leave me long with him, will you, Sam?”

.....