THE CISCO KID: O. HENRY’S ORIGINAL TALE

With Frontierado fast approaching on Friday August 2nd, here’s another seasonal post.

THE CABALLERO’S WAY (1907) – This was the original short story written by O. Henry in which he introduced the character called the Cisco Kid. The Caballero’s Way was first published in the July issue of Everybody’s Magazine, then was included in the anthology The Heart of the West later that year.

The Cisco Kid in this short story bears no resemblance to the Kid of later decades in pop culture. Early silent films like The Caballero’s Way (1914) and The Border Terror (1919) kept the basics of the O. Henry short story. The Kid was a selfish, ruthless, self-centered robber and hellraiser whose only admirable quality was his chivalrous refusal to harm women. 

The communities in the Cisco Kid’s territory between the Frio River and the Rio Grande help hide the kid from his Texas Ranger pursuers out of fear, NOT out of any fondness for the violent killer. Also unlike later portrayals of the Kid as a good guy, Cisco is an American whose surname is Goodall and he loves to shoot Mexican men.

A romantic triangle develops among the Cisco Kid, his favorite girl Tonia Perez and Lt. Dandridge, the Texas Ranger in charge of the latest attempts to capture or kill the Kid. In O. Henry’s story, Tonia clearly prefers Dandridge and wants him to kill Cisco so they can be together without any danger from him. 

Surely it’s no spoiler 117 years after the short story was published to mention that the O. Henry twist to The Caballero’s Way features the Cisco Kid tricking Dandridge into shooting Tonia to death in the dark, thinking it’s the Kid he’s shooting.   

Dandridge is devastated, since he genuinely loved Tonia, unlike Cisco, who simply rides off, merrily singing his favorite song to himself as the Texas Ranger’s agonized wails fill the night.

Anyone familiar with the later sound movies and the television series about the Cisco Kid knows that somehow this ruthless, uncaring gringo who enjoys shooting Mexicans to death somehow evolved into a noble, heroic – and Hispanic – “Robin Hood of the Old West.”

At any rate, the rest of this blog post will isolate the essential elements of the lore of the Cisco Kid as presented by his creator. 

BODY COUNT – As The Caballero’s Way opens, readers are told that the Cisco Kid has fatally gunned down six men in fair gunfights, and had shot dead twice as many, mostly Mexicans, in unfair circumstances. In addition, many times more had gotten bullet wounds from their encounters with the Kid.

TERRITORY – Cisco frequented the area between the Frio River and the Rio Grande and rode a speckled roan horse who “knew every cow-path in the mesquite and pear thickets from San Antonio to Matamoras.”

AGE – O. Henry tells us that his main character was 25 but looked 20.

TONIA PEREZ – She is described as “half Carmen, half Madonna and the rest hummingbird.” She was a skilled guitar player and lived with a very old man that the author called “either her father or grandfather.” That elder Perez herded goats and spent most of his time drunk from mescal. The home of Tonia and her older relative was located at the Frio River’s Lone Wolf Crossing.

THE CACTUS MAZE – The approach to the side of Casa Perez which faced away from the river was protected by a virtual labyrinth of cacti, some twenty feet high. The cactus maze was so sprawling and so tightly concentrated that anyone who lacked intimate familiarity with its twists and turns would be lost in it. This protective maze cemented Tonia as Cisco’s favorite lady to visit.

LIEUTENANT DANDRIDGE – We are never given a first name for this major character. He’s a blonde Texas Ranger, very tall and muscular and his masculine beauty helps him charm Tonia. The two fall deeply in love. 

THE KID’S BULLYING – When hiding from the law in between robberies, the Cisco Kid imposes on the Texans and Hispanic Americans at will. He demands food, drink and board, while sometimes cruelly amusing himself by making them sing for him, “encouraged” by the bullets he sprays around them.

FINK – A store owner in Lone Wolf Crossing. He is the only person in the area willing to provide Lt. Dandridge with information on the Cisco Kid.

CISCO SEES TONIA AND DANDRIDGE TOGETHER – After shooting up a town on Quintano Creek and gunning down its town marshal, the Cisco Kid rode to see Tonia. After riding through the Cactus Maze he spied Tonia canoodling with Lt. Dandridge but remained unseen by them. 

And from there, the Kid began contemplating a way of getting revenge on both the lawman and his unfaithful woman without breaking his policy of no violence toward women.

*** I will mention again that it’s a long way from the Cisco Kid being a figure like this to being the amiable, heroic caballero portrayed on the screen by Duncan Renaldo, Cesar Romero, Gilbert Roland, and Warner Baxter.