A Departmental Case

An aging Texas official recalls how he reluctantly dragged out his gun to protect Amanda, the bride of a gunman whose violence had driven her to seek help. But his story makes the narrator suspect that Amanda's motives were less than innocent.

An old Texas lawman remembers when he had to pull out his weapon to save Amanda, who was married to a violent gunfighter and came to him for protection. However, as he tells his story, the person listening begins to think Amanda might not have been as innocent as she seemed.

O. Henry, living in New York, travels to Austin, Texas, to get the full story of why Luke Standifer, 65, now working as Texas's commissioner of insurance, statistics and history, challenged and shot to death a notorious desperado, Benton Sharp. Standifer claims he did it because Sharp had been mistreating his wife, the daughter of a Texas hero. But O. Henry soon discovers the story is much more complicated than that.