y and a just one.

I leave the accused and the accuser before the bar of the world--let
their fate be pronounced.

A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER

BY O. HENRY

The trouble began in Laredo. It was the Llano Kid's fault, for he should
have confined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. But the Kid was
past twenty; and to have only Mexicans to one's credit at twenty is to
blush unseen on the Rio Grande border.

It happened in old Justo Valdos's gambling house. There was a poker game
at which sat players who were not all friends, as happens often where
men ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There was a row
over so small a matter as a pair of queens; and when the smoke had
cleared away it was found that the Kid had committed an indiscretion,
and his adversary had been guilty of a blunder. For, the unfortunate
combatant, instead of being a Greaser, was a high-blooded youth from the
cow ranches, of about the Kid's own age and possessed of friends and
champions. His blunder in missing the Kid's right ear only a sixteenth
of an inch when he pulled his gun did not lessen the indiscretion of the
better marksman.

The Kid, not being equipped with a retinue, nor bountifully supplied
with personal admirers and supporters--on account of a rather umbrageous
reputation even for the border--considered it not incompatible with his
indisputable gameness to perform that judicious tractional act known as
"pulling his freight."

Quickly the avengers gathered and sought him. Three of them overtook him
within a rod of the station. The Kid turned and showed his teeth in that
brilliant but mirthless smile that usually preceded his deeds of
insolence and violence, and his pursuers fell back without making it
necessary for him even to reach for his weapon.

But in this affair the Kid had not felt the grim thirst for encounter
that usually urged him on to battle. It had been a purely chance row,
born of the cards and certain epithets impossible for a gentleman to
brook, that had passed between the two. The Kid had rather liked the
slim, haughty, brown-faced young chap whom his bullet had cut off in the
first pride of manhood. And now he wanted no more blood. He wanted to
get away and have a good long sleep somewhere in the sun on the mesquit
grass with his handkerchief over his face. Even a Mexican might have
crossed his path in safety while he was in this mood.

The Kid openly boarded the north-bound passenger-train that d