The most interesting thing that I found in Very Short on Law and Order was the different viewpoints from which the narrator, Andrew Garcia, approached different story elements. First, and most striking for me, was horse thieving, which in the beginning he seems to glorify and even participate in. However, his final statement explains how if he had listened to Big Nose George “that night on the Big Timber, when he coaxed [the author] into becoming a horse thief like himself” he would have suffered the same fate. This is the central element of the story, and either intentionally or unintentionally he reinforces this with shifting attitudes about many other things.
Perhaps this is demonstrated most greatly by his attitudes towards the characters with whom he starts the story. At first he feels resentment towards them (or at least self pity) when he is forced by necessity to leave the group. Whichever sentiment it was, he felt no strong love or empathy for any of them (especially the drunken Beaver Tom). But when he learns later that they were killed to a man by La Brie, he is hurt – these were men that he knew! I believe that this was the root of his change in the story.
Another exemplifying element is Big Nose George. He is first depicted as a ruthless robber, taking Old Man Cohen's (who, interestingly enough, finds pity here when before he was shown as a money gouging scoundrel) money and peach brandy. Later, however, when he was apprehended and hung, he seemed to find sympathy from Andrew Garcia.All of these events -- his changing views of small and specific elements of the story -- conspire to likewise change his perceptions of the whole. These realizations are so subtle, and the conclusion drawn so obvious from them, that in your first reading you don't even realize that he has changed.
