Law and Order Page #3

"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

								

read in books about men that was disappointed in these poetic and
fine-haired and high-collared affairs with ladies renouncing truck of
that kind and wrapping themselves up into some occupation like painting
pictures, or herding sheep, or science, or teaching school—something to
make ’em forget. Well, I guess that was the way with Luke. But, as he
couldn’t paint pictures, he took it out in rounding up horse thieves
and in making Mojada County a safe place to sleep in if you was well
armed and not afraid of requisitions or tarantulas.

“One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors
from the East, and they stopped off there, Bildad being the dinner
station on the I. & G. N. They was just coming back from Mexico looking
after mines and such. There was five of ’em—four solid parties, with
gold watch chains, that would grade up over two hundred pounds on the
hoof, and one kid about seventeen or eighteen.

“This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as tenderfoots
bring West with ’em; and you could see he was aching to wing a couple
of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the little pearl-handled gun he
had buckled around his waist.

“I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see that
they didn’t locate any land or scare the cow ponies hitched in front of
Murchison’s store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was away after a gang
of cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I always looked after the law
and order when he wasn’t there.

“After dinner this boy comes out of the dining-room while the train was
waiting, and prances up and down the platform ready to shoot all
antelope, lions, or private citizens that might endeavour to molest or
come too near him. He was a good-looking kid; only he was like all them
tenderfoots—he didn’t know a law-and-order town when he saw it.

“By and by along comes Pedro Johnson, the proprietor of the Crystal
Palace chili-con-carne stand in Bildad. Pedro was a man who liked to
amuse himself; so he kind of herd rides this youngster, laughing at
him, tickled to death. I was too far away to hear, but the kid seems to
mention some remarks to Pedro, and Pedro goes up and slaps him about
nine feet away, and laughs harder than ever. And then the boy gets up
quicker than he fell and jerks out his little pearl-handle, and—bing!
bing! bing! Pedro gets it three times in special and treasured portions
of his carcass. I saw the dust fly off his clothes every time the
bullets hit. Sometimes them little thirty-twos cause worry at close
range.

“The engine bell was ringing, and the train starting off slow. I goes
up to the kid and places him under arrest, and takes away his gun. But
the first thing I knew that caballard of capitalists makes a break
for the train. One of ’em hesitates in front of me for a second, and
kind of smiles and shoves his hand up against my chin, and I sort of
laid down on the platform and took a nap. I never was afraid of guns;
but I don’t want any person except a barber to take liberties like that
with my face again. When I woke up, the whole outfit—train, boy, and
all—was gone. I asked about Pedro, and they told me the doctor said he
would recover provided his wounds didn’t turn out to be fatal.

“When Luke got back three days later, and I told him about it, he was
mad all over.

“‘Why’n’t you telegraph to San Antone,’ he asks, ‘and have the bunch
arrested there?’

“‘Oh, well,’ says I, ‘I always did admire telegraphy; but astronomy was
what I had took up just then.’ That capitalist sure knew how to
gesticulate with his hands.

“Luke got madder and madder. He investigates and finds in the depot a
card one of the men had dropped that gives the address of some hombre
called Scudder in New York City.

“‘Bud,’ says Luke, ‘I’m going after that bunch. I’m going there and get
the man or boy, as you say he was, and bring him back. I’m sheriff of
Mojada County, and I shall keep law and order in its precincts while
I’m able to draw a gun. And I want you to go with me. No Eastern Yankee
can shoot up a respectable and well-known citizen of Bildad, ’specially
with a thirty-two calibre, and escape the law. Pedro Johnson,’ says
Luke, ‘is one of our most prominent citizens and business men. I’ll
appoint Sam Bell acting sheriff with penitentiary powers while I’m
away, and you and me will take the six forty-five northbound to-morrow
evening and follow up this trail.’

“‘I’m your company,’ says I. ‘I never see this New York, but I’d like
to. But, Luke,’ says I, ‘don’t you have to have a dispensation or a
habeas corpus or something from the state, when you reach out that far
for rich men and malefactors?’

“‘Did I have a requisition,’ says Luke, ‘when I went over into the
Brazos bottoms and brought back Bill Grimes and two more for holding up
the International? Did me and you have a search warrant or a posse
comitatus when we rounded up them six Mexican cow thieves down in
Hidalgo? It’s my business to keep order in Mojada County.’

“‘And it’s my business as office deputy,’ says I, ‘to see that business
is carried on according to law. Between us both we ought to keep things
pretty well cleaned up.’

“So, the next day, Luke packs a blanket and some collars and his
mileage book in a haversack, and him and me hits the breeze for New
York. It was a powerful long ride. The seats in the cars was too short
for six-footers like us to sleep comfortable on; and the conductor had
to keep us from getting off at every town that had five-story houses in
it. But we got there finally; and we seemed to see right away that he
was right about it.

“‘Luke,’ says I, ‘as office deputy and from a law standpoint, it don’t
look to me like this place is properly and legally in the jurisdiction
of Mojada County, Texas.’

“‘From the standpoint of order,’ says he, ‘it’s amenable to answer for
its sins to the properly appointed authorities from Bildad to
Jerusalem.’

“‘Amen,’ says I. ‘But let’s turn our trick sudden, and ride. I don’t
like the looks of this place.’

“‘Think of Pedro Johnson,’ says Luke, ‘a friend of mine and yours shot
down by one of these gilded abolitionists at his very door!’

“‘It was at the door of the freight depot,’ says I. ‘But the law will
not be balked at a quibble like that.’

“We put up at one of them big hotels on Broadway. The next morning I
goes down about two miles of stairsteps to the bottom and hunts for
Luke. It ain’t no use. It looks like San Jacinto day in San Antone.
There’s a thousand folks milling around in a kind of a roofed-over
plaza with marble pavements and trees growing right out of ’em, and I
see no more chance of finding Luke than if we was hunting each other in
the big pear flat down below Old Fort Ewell. But soon Luke and me runs
together in one of the turns of them marble alleys.

“‘It ain’t no use, Bud,’ says he. ‘I can’t find no place to eat at.
I’ve been looking for restaurant signs and smelling for ham all over
the camp. But I’m used to going hungry when I have to. Now,’ says he,
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