Law and Order Page #2

"Law and Order" by O. Henry is a short story that explores themes of justice and morality through the eyes of a clever and resourceful narrator. Set in a bustling urban environment, the narrative revolves around a petty thief who, while trying to evade capture, inadvertently reveals deeper insights into the complexities of legal systems and human behavior. O. Henry's signature wit and twist ending highlight the contrasts between societal norms and individual choices, ultimately prompting readers to question the true meaning of law and order in everyday life.

• Short story

								

straight to the office of a lawyer. They go in a room and talk and then
come out.

“‘Oh, there won’t be any trouble, Mr. Summers,’ says the lawyer. ‘I’ll
acquaint Judge Simmons with the facts to-day; and the matter will be
put through as promptly as possible. Law and order reigns in this state
as swift and sure as any in the country.’

“‘I’ll wait for the decree if it won’t take over half an hour,’ says
Luke.

“‘Tut, tut,’ says the lawyer man. ‘Law must take its course. Come back
day after to-morrow at half-past nine.’

“At that time me and Luke shows up, and the lawyer hands him a folded
document. And Luke writes him out a check.

“On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger the
size of a kitchen door latch on it and says:

“‘Decree of ab-so-lute divorce with cus-to-dy of the child.’

“‘Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,’ says
I, ‘it looks to me like a split. Couldn’t the lawyer man have made it a
strike for you?’

“‘Bud,’ says he, in a pained style, ‘that child is the one thing I have
to live for. She may go; but the boy is mine!—think of it—I have
cus-to-dy of the child.’

“‘All right,’ says I. ‘If it’s the law, let’s abide by it. But I
think,’ says I, ‘that Judge Simmons might have used exemplary clemency,
or whatever is the legal term, in our case.’

“You see, I wasn’t inveigled much into the desirableness of having
infants around a ranch, except the kind that feed themselves and sell
for so much on the hoof when they grow up. But Luke was struck with
that sort of parental foolishness that I never could understand. All
the way riding from the station back to the ranch, he kept pulling that
decree out of his pocket and laying his finger on the back of it and
reading off to me the sum and substance of it. ‘Cus-to-dy of the child,
Bud,’ says he. ‘Don’t forget it—cus-to-dy of the child.’

“But when we hits the ranch we finds our decree of court obviated,
nolle prossed, and remanded for trial. Mrs. Summers and the kid was
gone. They tell us that an hour after me and Luke had started for San
Antone she had a team hitched and lit out for the nearest station with
her trunks and the youngster.

“Luke takes out his decree once more and reads off its emoluments.

“‘It ain’t possible, Bud,’ says he, ‘for this to be. It’s contrary to
law and order. It’s wrote as plain as day here—“Cus-to-dy of the
child.”’

“‘There is what you might call a human leaning,’ says I, ‘toward
smashing ’em both—not to mention the child.’

“‘Judge Simmons,’ goes on Luke, ‘is a incorporated officer of the law.
She can’t take the boy away. He belongs to me by statutes passed and
approved by the state of Texas.’

“‘And he’s removed from the jurisdiction of mundane mandamuses,’ says
I, ‘by the unearthly statutes of female partiality. Let us praise the
Lord and be thankful for whatever small mercies—’ I begins; but I see
Luke don’t listen to me. Tired as he was, he calls for a fresh horse
and starts back again for the station.

“He come back two weeks afterward, not saying much.

“‘We can’t get the trail,’ says he; ‘but we’ve done all the
telegraphing that the wires’ll stand, and we’ve got these city rangers
they call detectives on the lookout. In the meantime, Bud,’ says he,
‘we’ll round up them cows on Brush Creek, and wait for the law to take
its course.’”

“And after that we never alluded to allusions, as you might say.

“Skipping over much what happened in the next twelve years, Luke was
made sheriff of Mojada County. He made me his office deputy. Now, don’t
get in your mind no wrong apparitions of a office deputy doing sums in
a book or mashing letters in a cider press. In them days his job was to
watch the back windows so nobody didn’t plug the sheriff in the rear
while he was adding up mileage at his desk in front. And in them days I
had qualifications for the job. And there was law and order in Mojada
County, and schoolbooks, and all the whiskey you wanted, and the
Government built its own battleships instead of collecting nickels from
the school children to do it with. And, as I say, there was law and
order instead of enactments and restrictions such as disfigure our
umpire state to-day. We had our office at Bildad, the county seat, from
which we emerged forth on necessary occasions to soothe whatever
fracases and unrest that might occur in our jurisdiction.

“Skipping over much what happened while me and Luke was sheriff, I want
to give you an idea of how the law was respected in them days. Luke was
what you would call one of the most conscious men in the world. He
never knew much book law, but he had the inner emoluments of justice
and mercy inculcated into his system. If a respectable citizen shot a
Mexican or held up a train and cleaned out the safe in the express car,
and Luke ever got hold of him, he’d give the guilty party such a
reprimand and a cussin’ out that he’d probable never do it again. But
once let somebody steal a horse (unless it was a Spanish pony), or cut
a wire fence, or otherwise impair the peace and indignity of Mojada
County, Luke and me would be on ’em with habeas corpuses and smokeless
powder and all the modern inventions of equity and etiquette.

“We certainly had our county on a basis of lawfulness. I’ve known
persons of Eastern classification with little spotted caps and
buttoned-up shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat sandwiches at
the railroad station without being shot at or even roped and drug about
by the citizens of the town.

“Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice. He was kind of
training me to succeed him when he went out of office. He was always
looking ahead to the time when he’d quit sheriffing. What he wanted to
do was to build a yellow house with lattice-work under the porch and
have hens scratching in the yard. The one main thing in his mind seemed
to be the yard.

“‘Bud,’ he says to me, ‘by instinct and sentiment I’m a contractor. I
want to be a contractor. That’s what I’ll be when I get out of office.’

“‘What kind of a contractor?’ says I. ‘It sounds like a kind of a
business to me. You ain’t going to haul cement or establish branches or
work on a railroad, are you?’

“‘You don’t understand,’ says Luke. ‘I’m tired of space and horizons
and territory and distances and things like that. What I want is
reasonable contraction. I want a yard with a fence around it that you
can go out and set on after supper and listen to whip-poor-wills,’ says
Luke.

“That’s the kind of a man he was. He was home-like, although he’d had
bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them times on
the ranch. It seemed like he’d forgotten about it. I wondered how, with
his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of lattice-work, he’d
seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of his that had been taken
away from him, unlawful, in spite of his decree of court. But he wasn’t
a man you could ask about such things as he didn’t refer to in his own
conversation.

“I reckon he’d put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff. I’ve
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes