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Shvoong Home>Arts & Humanities>What you do not want others to do to you do not do to them Summary

What you do not want others to do to you do not do to them

Book Summary   by:marbul     Original Author: Otakar Batlicka
  • Summary rating: 5 stars (2 Ratings)
  • Visits : 601
  • words:900 
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One lives easily in places where authorities reside with efficient laws and lawyers, however in areas far away from any civilisation you are often looking in vain for justice. People have got no choice left rather than help each other according to their own reasoning of good as well as less good customs.
Otakar Batlicka was then sitting by a campfire in some distant corner of Central America when cowboys arrived and were administering justice among each other in front of his own eyes. The principle eye for eye guided them, tooth for tooth.
In his thoughts Otakar was opposed but did not resolve to a loud protest. Two young men, Mark Tenner and Joe Sharp set off to Bolivar. They wanted to find work on one of the cattle farms. And so they travelled by the only passable place of the pampa - the railway track, which was surely hot and boiling. After five days walk they had behind them the most difficult part and they were approaching the before last, quite deserted train station where a train only passed two or three times per week. The place was called By the well and the tramps wanted to spend the night in this depopulated wasteland near a source of drinking water. They were looking forward that afterwards in three or four days time they would reach Bolivar.
They reached the well. All around there are black leftovers of many campfires but there are no people in the surroundings. Tenner and Sharp dipped water and started to prepare dinner. They were putting up for the night when two men came along the railway line.
But the two men do not raise much confidence. They are more like loafers than tramps; their clothes and the most necessary gear are torn and dirty.
The loafers joined them and let them be hosted from the modest reserves. They are not much fun they only mumble something from time to time, their longest sentence consists just of two sentences. They are rather fed up and want to go to sleep.
The last pieces of campfire wood stopped burning.
Long time before sunrise Mark Tenner was woken up by cold. He wanted to pull blanket over his head, he fumbles about with his hand but he cannot feel his blanket.
He is waking his friend who is lifting himself sleepily on his elbows.
The two ragged men have gone. And so have Tenner and Sharp’s things
Both friends are jumping up and finding what the ungrateful co-lodgers stole from them.
They have even taken their shoes. Food, blankets, weapons – everything gone! When the sun will start to burn they will go mad with heat. They have even taken their hats.
Mark Tenner is realising with horror in what a desperate situation they both found themselves in. Without food and weapons they might just about manage to reach inhabited places, where people could help them. But they will never get there without their hats and bare footed. Sharp stones and grasses, cactuses and low thorny creepers will cause them serious injuries after just a few minutes walk.
The tramps are finding the only solution walking in on the wooden rails of the track. And they have to calculate each step and walk briskly. The sun is burning stronger and stronger. The skin on their bare feet is merging into one bloody blotch.
Sharp is sinking into the boiling sand, as he cannot walk any further.
Tenner is silently sitting down next to his friend. Desperate thoughts are running through their heads.
They are lying exhausted for 10 minutes, 20 minutes by the rail and nearly miss their opportunity when in a distance of a few hundred metres a group of horse riders is racing along the railway.
The two friends are jumping up and down, shouting and waving. A dozen brown gauchos are riding towards the young men.
A man with a wide wrinkled face, apparently a leader understands the situation quickly. He is pointing to the bare bloody feet of the tramps with a horse-riding whip.
The unlucky men are talking briefly about their night experience.
The leader ordered for the two young men to be take to the ranch and with the rest of the group went to search for the two rogues.
Toward the evening, the leader’s group has reached the ranch. Two tied up vagabonds were sitting rigidly on the horses in front of two riders.
After dusk a fire was lit in the open space between the farm and the cattle fold. Twenty men were sitting down around the high flashing flames. Altogether these are ranchers from the environs who gathered in a hurry for the trial. The old farmer is taking the floor. He says that they all know what they have committed. They are in the middle of harvest and have not got the time to take them 100 miles to court in town. They will judge them themselves according to the old law: ‘ what you do not want others to do to you don’t do to them.”
The assembly agreed approvingly.
In the morning they would take the thieves to the railway and will leave them there without gear and bear footed. The suggestion of the farmer with grey hair is accepted unanimously.
Otakar has been looking reflectively for a long time into the fire, in thoughts he opposed and refused. But he did not protest loudly with one single word.
Published: March 28, 2006   
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