By O. Henry
ReadOasis Step 3
(Part 1)

It looked like a good thing. Bill Driscoll and I were down south, in Alabama. This kidnapping idea struck us. There was a town, as flat as a pancake, called Summit. Bill and I had about six hundred dollars. We needed just two thousand dollars more. It was for an illegal land deal in Illinois.

We chose our victim. The only child of an influential citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The child was a ten year-old boy, with red hair. Bill and I thought that Ebenezer...