The Ransom of Red Chief

• Part 1: The Brainstorming and the Snatch

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama—Bill Driscoll and Me 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. It contained inhabitants of as Undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole. Bill and I needed capital. We had a fraudulent town-lot scheme of ours down there that we wanted to pull off, but we needed a little ready money. So, one evening we kidnapped the son of old Dorsey, from Summit.

Dorsey was the prominent, tight-fisted, mortgage-lifting citizen of the vicinity. Redheaded boy of ten with freckles and hair the color of the setting sun, Bill and I figured that Dorsey would come down handsomely for his boy. Why, that boy could get more real targeted nuisance out of one square mile than all the other boys in Summit could out of four. So, we took him up to the cave back in Poplar Cove, three miles from Summit, and started to talk over the terms.

• Part 2: Introducing the "Red Chief"

It looked mighty fine to me, that twenty-five hundred dollars that we were asking through the post-office for the delivery of Ebenezer Dorsey’s kid. Bill and I addressed the letter to old Dorsey, and put it in the post-office at Summit the same night.

All that day and the next we never saw a soul. The boy was pleasant enough at first. So we told him that we were playing the game of being Red Chief; and I was Old Hank, the Trapper, and Bill was the Scout.“Okay,” says he, “that suits me.” So, all day he was King Arthur; and I had to call him “Your Majesty.” That night I was to be the Black Scout, and Bill was to come up from the ambush when I fired three shots. Then, we were to scalp him.

But about the time I was arranging ammunition and getting ready to go, Red Chief was sitting there on the ground, tearing up some moss, with his little hatchet. He looked up and says: “Ah, hain’t you going to have some fun?”

“Oh, yes,” say I, “I’m going to visit the Black Scout.”

“Oh,” says he. “If you won’t let me go with you, I’ll tell.”

“No, you can’t go,” says I.

“I’ll tell,” says he, and begins to kick me hard, with his little boots. After that, he changed his mind and

Said he would go along.

• Part 3: The Reign of Terror Begins

We went to the place where Bill had told him to be in ambush; and when I fired the shots Bill came creeping out on his all fours like a bear. Red Chief took one look at him, and screamed like a hornet stung him. Right there he caught Bill by the hair and begun to try to take his scalp with his hatchet.

Bill roared out, but I managed to grab Red Chief around the waist and take his hatchet away from him. Then we set down again on the ground and tried to explain that the Black Scout had to be scalped, but that was just a game.

“I like to scalp,” says he. “You scalped Bill all right; but I was in the way. Why don’t you scalp some more?”

“Oh, Bill,” say I, “you’re hurt. But it’s play, you know. We’ll fix it up better in the morning.”

“Fix it up!” says Bill. “I’d fix it up so he couldn’t do that again!”

• Part 4: Demands and Diversions

As for me, I was feeling like a genuine philanthropist. I had brought up a innocent child from a atmosphere of luxury and idleness into the rugged embraces of the forest primeval, and the lessons of old Hank, the Trapper, I was imprinting on his youthful mind. He had already learned that scalping was “fun,” and that a grown-up person’s legs were intended for climbing trees.

Next morning, I was up early and went out and looked at the cave. It looked mighty discouraging. Then I went down to the woods where Bill was, and found him sitting on a mossy log, chafing his shins.

“Why, Bill,” says I, “you’re black-and-blue. What a high-spirited lad that Red Chief is! But you must keep up your spirits. Think of the twenty-five hundred dollars we’re going to get.”

“Yes,” says Bill, “and think of how long we’re going to keep it. He made me eat dirt yesterday.”

“He’s an awful little rascal,” says I. “But, now, Bill, we must be serious about this thing. I’ll go and over to Summit and see if old Dorsey has received our letter.”

• Part 5: The Unexpected Reply

So I went over to Summit, and inquired all around but couldn’t find anybody that seemed to know anything about the kidnapping. I waited around until about noon, and then the postmaster came out with a registered letter. I took it and slipped back to Poplar Cove.

I opened it, and there was a short note in it from old man Dorsey. It went like this:

“Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbors believe he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for what they might do to anybody they saw bringing him back.

Very respectfully,

EBENEZER DORSEY.”

• Part 6: The Negotiated Release

I nearly fainted. But I had to think quickly. I went out and found Bill throwing rocks at a squirrel in a tree.

“Bill,” says I, “have you got back to your right mind yet?”

“Why, I was hoping that you had come and brought news that Dorsey had agreed to pay the ransom,” Says Bill.

“Agreed to pay!” says I. “Why, he’s made us a counter-proposition.”“What is it?” Bill asks eagerly.

“He says,” say I, “That we are to bring Johnny home and pay him two hundred and fifty dollars.”

“Pay him two hundred and fifty dollars!” says Bill, fairly choking. “Is he crazy?”

“I don’t know,” says I, “but that’s what he writes.”Bill sat down on the ground and looked at me like I had brought him down from the top of Pike’s Peak.

“That means,” says he, “that we’ve got to take that boy back and pay out two hundred and fifty dollars. Couldn’t we just leave him somewhere on the road?”

“No,” says I; “because he’d go home, and the neighbors would lynch us.”

• Part 7: The Hasty Departure

So we took him home that night. We got him about half-way to Summit, when he said: “I don’t want to go home.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” says Bill, wringing his hands.

“No, I don’t,” says he. “I had lots of fun at the cave. You won’t let me play Indian anymore.”

“But, Johnny,” say I, “you’ll have ever so much fun at home.”

“Oh,” says he. “Whooping Creek’s dried up.”

“Come on, Johnny,” says Bill. And he took him by the hand and led him toward the road.

• Part 8: Freedom at a Price

Old Dorsey was waiting on the porch for us. Bill counted out two hundred and fifty dollars into his hand.

The boy stood there, howling like a calliope. “I’m going to stay here awhile,” says he. Bill took him forcibly by the collar, while I pinned his arms behind him. He kicked and bit and scratched like a wildcat.

At 12 o’clock we were foot-sore and dusty prisoners of Summit. The boy was crying lustily. Old Dorsey patted him on the back and led him inside the house.

Bill and I waited until we could see a light in the sitting-room. And then we left Summit the same way we had come, and as fast as we could go.

• Summary

In short the story “The Ransom of The Red Chief” is a hilarious and ironic reversal where the Kidnappers Bill and Sam, end of paying exasperated father to take his troublesome son back, Highlighting the folly of their plan and unexpected dominance of their ; victim.

• References

This story, "The Ransom of Red Chief,” was written by O. Henry, the pen name of William Sydney Porter (1862-1910).