It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you.
The opening line of "The Ransom of Red Chief" establishes the narrator's good-humored voice as he looks back on a kidnapping plot that went wrong; the line also sets up the reader for the irony at the heart of the story. The sentence's first clause captures the naïve optimism Sam and Bill had when they hatched the scheme, while the second clause conveys Sam's hindsight knowledge of how things actually turned out. With this combination of naivety and wisdom, Sam seeks to entice the reader into learning why what "looked like a good thing" yielded unexpected results.
One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.
In this passage, Sam recounts how he and Bill, after targeting Ebenezer Dorset's son, find the boy playing out front of his father's house. That Johnny is throwing rocks at a kitten—as opposed to, say, skipping rope or playing hopscotch—establishes the boy's cruel idea of fun. With this detail, O. Henry foreshadows the violence to which Johnny will subject Bill.
Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a warwhoop that made Old Hank, the Trapper, shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start.
In this passage, Sam describes how Johnny's commitment to playing make-believe means he is unfazed by his kidnapping, apparently unaware that he is being held captive. Ironically, Bill is more frightened of Johnny than Johnny is of him. Sam comments that Johnny "had Bill terrorized from the start," referring to how Johnny's response to Bill's offer of a bag of candy was met with a piece of brick between Bill's eyes.
"Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?"
"Aw, what for?" says he. "I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won’t take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?"
In this exchange of dialogue, Sam becomes aware of Johnny's apparent comfort with the kidnappers and asks the boy if he wants to go home. The threat of being sent home prompts Johnny to break character and complain about how little fun he has at home and at school. The passage is significant because it presents an instance of situational irony in which the kidnapped boy pleads with his captor not to bring him home.
I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s chest, with one hand twined in Bill’s hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.
After being woken by a terrifying scream, Sam sees Johnny making good on the threat he made while pretending to be Red Chief and trying to remove Bill's scalp at daybreak. The sudden escalation from make-believe to life-threatening violence convinces Sam to be just as frightened of the boy as is Bill. The incident is significant because it speaks to how thoroughly the men have underestimated Johnny's capacity for cruelty and their own capacity to keep him under control.
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.
In his response to Sam and Bill's ransom letter, Johnny's father writes in a calm, confident, and condescending tone as he suggests the men ought to pay him to take the boy back. The passage is significant because it marks the great ironic twist at the heart of "The Ransom of Red Chief": rather than oblige the kidnappers, Dorset reveals that he understands what a challenge it can be to keep Johnny entertained and he knows that the men will be so desperate to get rid of him that they will pay.
And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.
The story's final paragraph cements the story's comic sensibility, as Bill, despite not having an athletic build, runs as fast as he possibly can to get away from Johnny. This closing image also underscores the irony at the heart of the story: rather than running out of Summit to escape the police, Bill and Sam need to escape the kid they abducted.
