His brother's keeper

About the book

Jim Deming has earned the nickname Duty by enforcing the law without allowing affection or circumstance to soften his decisions. His own son is in prison, his daughter's intended husband has also been sentenced, and his wife finally leaves, convinced that the sheriff's rigid certainty has destroyed their home. Deputy Joe Mills sees the damage but cannot persuade his superior to reconsider. When Deming pursues a man accused of murder into the harsh country beyond Calor, the question of justice becomes more intimate than the authority of a badge can settle. Tuttle gives this short Western a severity different from a comic gunfighter adventure. The desert's physical demands expose the limits of self-sufficiency and force the story's moral conflict into actions rather than declarations.

• Duty without mercy
• Family and authority
• Justice and dependence

Why read it

The wife's departure establishes the human cost of Deming's principles before the pursuit puts those principles under direct strain.

English story from Short Stories Magazine, January 25, 1928