Short Fiction, O. Henry [best books to read for teens TXT] 📗

“ ‘Tut, tut,’ says the lawyer man. ‘Law must take its course. Come back day after tomorrow 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 today. 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 latticework 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