The Reverend Homer poked his ermine-lined face through the doorway and added a concordance to the conversation.
'Sometimes,' said he, 'old Campos keeps the dried nuts in his little store on the hill. But it would be far better, my daughter, to restrain unusual desires, and partake thankfully of the daily dishes that the Lord has set before us.'
'Stuff!' said I.
'How was that?' asked the Reverend Homer, sharply.
'I say it's tough,' said I, 'to drop into the vernacular, that Miss Greene should be deprived of the food she desires-a simple thing like kalsomine-pudding. Perhaps,' I continued, solicitously, 'some pickled walnuts or a fricassee of Hungarian butternuts would do as well.'
Every one looked at me with a slight exhibition of curiosity.
Louis Devoe arose and made his adieus. I watched him until he had sauntered slowly and grandiosely to the corner, around which he turned to reach his great warehouse and store. Chloe made her excuses, and went inside for a few minutes to attend to some detail affecting the seven-o'clock dinner. She was a passed mistress in housekeeping. I had tasted her puddings and bread with beatitude.
When all had gone, I turned casually and saw a basket made of plaited green withes hanging by a nail outside the door-jamb. With a rush that made my hot temples throb there came vividly to my mind recollections of the head-hunters--those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed presence. . . . From time to time, as vanity or ennui or love or jealousy or ambition may move him, one creeps forth with his snickersnee and takes up the silent trail. . . . Back he comes, triumphant, bearing the severed, gory head of his victim . . . His particular brown or white maid lingers, with fluttering bosom, casting soft tiger's eyes at the evidence of his love for her.
I stole softly from the house and returned to my hut. From its supporting nails in the wall I took a machete as heavy as a butcher's cleaver and sharper than a safety-razor. And then I chuckled softly to myself, and set out to the fastidiously appointed private office of Monsieur Louis Devoe, usurper to the hand of the Pearl of the Pacific.
He was never slow at thinking; he gave one look at my face and another at the weapon in my hand as I entered his door, and then he seemed to fade from my sight. I ran to the back door, kicked it open, and saw him running like a deer up the road toward the wood that began two hundred yards away. I was after him, with a shout. I remember hearing children and women screaming, and seeing them flying from the road.
He was fleet, but I was stronger. A mile, and I had almost come up with him. He doubled cunningly and dashed into a brake that extended into a small canon. I crashed through this after him, and in five minutes had him cornered in an angle of insurmountable cliffs. There his instinct of self-preservation steadied him, as it will steady even animals at bay. He turned to me, quite calm, with a ghastly smile.
'Oh, Rayburn!' he said, with such an awful effort at ease that I was impolite enough to laugh rudely in his face. 'Oh, Rayburn!' said he, 'come, let's have done with this nonsense. Of course, I know it's the fever and you're not yourself; but collect yourself, man-give me that ridiculous weapon, now, and let's go back and talk it over.'
'I will go back,' said I, 'carrying your head with me. We will see how charmingly it can discourse when it lies in the basket at her door.'
'Come,' said he, persuasively, 'I think better of you than to suppose that you try this sort of thing as a joke. But even the vagaries of a fever-crazed lunatic come some time to a limit. What is this talk about heads and baskets? Get yourself together and throw away that absurd cane-chopper. What would Miss Greene think of you?' he ended, with the silky cajolery that one would use toward a fretful child.
'Listen,' said I. 'At last you have struck upon the right note. What would she think of me? Listen,' I repeated.
'There are women,' I said, 'who look upon horsehair sofas and currant wine as dross. To them even the calculated modulation of your well- trimmed talk sounds like the dropping of rotten plums from a tree in the night. They are the maidens who walk back and forth in the villages, scorning the emptiness of the baskets at the doors of the young men who would win them.
One such as they,' I said, 'is waiting. Only a fool would try to win a woman by drooling like a braggart in her doorway or by waiting upon her whims like a footman. They are all daughters of Herodias, and to gain their hearts one must lay the heads of his enemies before them with his own hands. Now, bend your neck, Louis Devoe. Do not be a coward as well as a chatterer at a lady's tea-table.'
'There, there!' said Devoe, falteringly. 'You know me, don't you, Rayburn?'
'Oh yes,' I said, 'I know you. I know you. I know you. But the basket is empty. The old men of the village and the young men, and both the dark maidens and the ones who are as fair as pearls walk back and forth and see its emptiness. Will you kneel now, or must we have a scuffle? It is not like you to make things go roughly and with bad form. But the basket is waiting for your head.'
With that he went to pieces. I had to catch him as he tried to scamper past me like a scared rabbit. I stretched him out and got a foot on his chest, but he squirmed like a worm, although I appealed repeatedly to his sense of propriety and the duty he owed to himself as a gentleman not to make a row.
But at last he gave me the chance, and I swung the machete.
It was not hard work. He flopped like a chicken during the six or seven blows that it took to sever his head; but finally he lay still, and I tied his head in my handkerchief. The eyes opened and shut thrice while I walked a hundred yards. I was red to my feet with the drip, but what did that matter? With delight I felt under my hands the crisp touch of his short, thick, brown hair and close-trimmed beard.
I reached the house of the Greenes and dumped the head of Louis Devoe into the basket that still hung by the nail in the door-jamb. I sat in a chair under the awning and waited. The sun was within two hours of setting. Chloe came out and looked surprised.
'Where have you been, Tommy?' she asked. 'You were gone when I came out.'
'Look in the basket,' I said, rising to my feet. She looked, and gave a little scream--of delight, I was pleased to note.
