The Ox-Bow Incident (21 page)

When I next knew where I was Davies had me bandaged up tightly with strips of somebody’s shirt, my sheepskin was on me again, and Moore was trying to pour another drink into me. I felt shaky and empty, but angry too, because so many people had watched me pass out.

The men pretended they hadn’t seen any weakness; they were going about their business, remounting and forming above the coach. Gil lit me a cigarette, and when I looked at the men forming and then at him, he nodded. I felt weak, all washed out, and it was snowing harder than before, a thin cover of snow showing on the ground in the light around the circular shadow of the bottom of the lantern. I wasn’t interested any longer, not either way; the voices talking were like those of people in another room, heard through the wall. They didn’t concern me. But when Davies told me that “the fools still meant to go on,” but there was room for me in the coach, and I’d better go back and rest at Canby’s and get some hot food and get out of the wind, I told him hell no, there was nothing the matter with me. He argued a little, and Ma came and joked at me but helped him argue, and I got to feeling stubborn and just sat there smoking my cigarette and saying no, and finally just smoking. When I had to stand up so they could put the trunk back on the coach, Rose got out and came over and took hold of my elbow and tried to charm me into going down with them. Somehow I could tell from her talk that she knew what we were doing now. That only made me all the surer; I didn’t want to ride down with her and
the spinster sister and red-whiskers all interested and pumping me about it. I liked her hand holding me affectionately by the arm as if I were an old, dear friend she was worried about, but even so it only made me more stubborn, because I knew she didn’t mean it. Then Winder came and told me not to be a damned fool, to get in the coach and go on home, where I wouldn’t be in the way. Gil told Winder to mind his own business, that he’d look after me himself if I needed any looking after. Winder turned his head slowly and stared at Gil like he couldn’t believe he’d heard anyone speak to him that way, but Rose broke it up this time by letting go of my arm and telling Winder to let the idiot, meaning me, go ahead and act like an idiot if he wanted to, it was none of their funeral. That made Gil grin at her again. She stared at him for an instant too, but thought better of what she was going to say, and turned her back on him and got back into the coach with a flourish of her skirts. She slammed the door after her, although her husband wasn’t in. He’d been standing by the back wheel of the coach all this time, once in a while brushing the snow from his front, and talking with Tetley, Small and Carnes. Again he hadn’t missed anything. He took his part in the talk, so quietly I couldn’t hear him, but he watched Gil all the time, very steadily. He didn’t even stop watching Gil when Rose slammed into the coach, but kept looking at him like he wanted to remember everything about him.

Out of the corner of my mouth I told Gil, “Red-whiskers is measuring you for a coffin, my friend.”

Gil looked at Swanson, and then returned his stare, grinning. “Yeah?” he said to me, and then, still staring at Swanson, “What have I said? I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s his wife, now,” I reminded him, “and kind of new.”

“It does look that way, don’t it?” Gil said, as if it didn’t. He said it too loudly, and from the way Swanson stared more intently for just a moment, I thought he’d heard. But
then he turned away from Gil and looked at Tetley again, answering a question of Tetley’s. Gil relaxed, his little grin changing so it meant he knew he’d won.

Swanson and Carnes and Small had been telling Tetley about some men they’d seen, four, Carnes and Swanson thought, but Small thought three, who had a fire in the mouth of a ravine five miles the other side of the summit. They had seen horses, but no cattle, but Swanson said the ravine was so black they couldn’t have told past the fire. Small said, if there’d been any cattle, there couldn’t have been many. He knew the ravine, used the mouth of it as a turn-out to rest his horses, and it was too small. No, he was sure they couldn’t have got forty head in there; not even ten or fifteen without their showing. Yes, he was sure about the place. He’d had it in his mind to stop there to breathe the horses, but the men were so quiet he hadn’t liked it; he’d changed his mind and gone right by and breathed the team at Indian Springs, farther up.

Swanson agreed that the men had not seemed friendly. They’d stood up when the coach came by, and when Alec had hailed them they hadn’t said anything, and only one of them had raised a hand. He was sure there’d been a fourth man, just beyond the firelight, and that he’d stood up too. Alec admitted he might have missed him; he’d been busy with the team, to keep them from turning in there, where they expected to. No, neither Small nor Carnes had recognized any of the men. Carnes thought they’d kept their faces out of the light on purpose. He thought also that all the men except the one who had raised his hand had been ready to draw, but Carnes must have been drunk then, and now his imagination was working from the story about Kinkaid. Swanson didn’t think they were going to draw; he merely thought they were very watchful and too quiet. But yes, he agreed with Carnes and Small that the men were wearing guns. He couldn’t be sure whether the men were really camped for the night. Carnes said they weren’t. The
fire, he said, was a small one, and the horses weren’t hobbled or tethered, but just standing at one side of the fire with their bridles trailing and the saddles still on. When Tetley asked him, Small repeated exactly where the place was and what you came to before you got there. He tried to remember just what marks you could still tell by in the snow, and then Winder, who had joined them, told Tetley he knew the place, and could warn them long enough before they got there, even if the fire was out. There were marks you couldn’t miss, he said, and mentioned trees and boulders, and the shape of the road, and Tetley was satisfied.

He thanked Swanson, as if Swanson had told him everything and the other two hadn’t even been along. He told Swanson that he and the sheriff were very grateful that Swanson had been so observant, that it let them know more clearly what to expect; they could figure on four men, armed and wary. I looked at Gil and Gil looked at me and grinned just a little. It tickled us, in an ornery way, that even Tetley didn’t like the idea of Swanson knowing that this was a lynching party instead of a posse. Then Tetley complimented Swanson again on his fortune in wedding, and hoped he might have the pleasure of entertaining Swanson and his bride and his sister in his own poor way, if they were going to be in Bridger’s Wells for a while. From all the anxiety Tetley let show you’d have thought they were two men passing the time of day in a hotel lobby, with nothing coming up but a good night’s sleep. Then Tetley turned toward his horse, and Winder with him, and Carnes and Small climbed up onto the high seat.

Gil was just going to help me into the saddle when there was Swanson standing in front of us. It surprised us, and Gil let go of me quickly to get his hands free. It made him sore that he had been surprised into moving quickly.

Swanson smiled a little. He spoke very politely and quietly. “I take it,” he said, “that yours was the privilege of knowing Miss Mapen before she became my wife?”

“Yeah,” Gil said slowly, “that’s right.”

“And that possibly you imagined, at the time, that there was something between you?”

“I didn’t have to imagine it,” Gil said.

“No?” Swanson asked him. “Possibly not,” he continued. “My wife is a very impulsive woman, given naturally to regarding everyone as a friend.”

He stopped and looked at Gil, still smiling. Gil didn’t say anything. He was slow in understanding what to make of that kind of talk.

“Needless to say,” Swanson went on, “I am pleased to regard any friend of my wife as a friend of my own.” He smiled at Gil, but didn’t offer his hand. Gil still just looked at him.

“However,” Swanson said, “I needn’t remind you, of course, that the pleasure of such an acquaintance depends somewhat upon the recognition by all parties of the fact that Miss Mapen is now my wife. She must be given a little time,” he continued, “to become accustomed to her new responsibilities. As yet, I must confess, I am peculiarly jealous of even her least attentions. You will forgive me, I know. A bridgegroom is prone to be overly susceptible for a time.

“Later,” he concluded, “when we have had time to become accustomed to our new relations, I will be most anxious, if it is still my wife’s desire, to welcome you, and others of my wife’s friends, at our home in San Francisco.

“Until then,” he nodded pleasantly, still smiling, turned around, walked to the coach, got in, and closed the door quietly. He relighted the lamp inside the coach, and as it started on down we could see him sitting beside Rose. She had her hands joined through his arm and was smiling up at him, but he wasn’t smiling any more.

Gil had it all straight by then. “The damned superior son-of-a-bitch,” he said softly, looking after the coach. He’d never got a taking down like that in his life before.

He mounted silently, but turned his horse to look after
the coach again. I got up too, making more fuss than I had to, so he’d help me. Then I said, “It looks to me like Rose had caught herself a load of trouble.”

We started up after the others, just feeling the snow in the dark again.

“Yeah?” Gil said. “Maybe she ain’t the only one. Rose is no stable filly.”

I didn’t answer. I was glad enough we’d come out of it without any more trouble than the talk. We were up in the clearing again before Gil said, “If that bastard’s got her all roped and tied the way he talks, what are they doing up here at all? I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut hole that wasn’t his idea.”

“Forget it,” I told him.

“Sure, for now,” he said.

Then he said, “If you get to feelin’ it, fellow, sound off. This still ain’t any of our picnic.”

“I will.”

“I should have made you go down in the coach,” he apologized later, “but with all of them raggin’ you, I didn’t think.”

I told him I was all right. In a way I was, too. The whisky was working good, like I had all the blood back, and somehow being hit like that, now that I was patched up, made me feel like I had a stake in the business.

We rode across the clearing and under the trees on the other side. The snow was right in our faces, and we couldn’t tell where we were farther than the rumps of the horses ahead. We went slowly, but even so the procession kept stopping while Tetley and Mapes made sure we were still on the road, and nearly every time we stopped, Blue Boy rammed his nose on the horse ahead and brought up short, throwing his head. My shoulder would jerk then, and finally I got to swearing softly. Just sitting there in the dark, with nothing else to think about, I began to feel that shoulder. It felt hard and drawn together, like it was crusted, and would tear if I moved it. They’d put my shirt
back on me too, and it was stiff and scratchy down that side where the blood had dried in it. Twice I had a drink from my canteen to keep my head from getting light. But my head got even lighter, and, besides, it was so much work trying to twist around and get the canteen that I quit that too. Between the whisky and the pain I must have been getting dopey, because at first I didn’t hear Gil trying to say something to me. Then the wind was so strong and muffled with snow that I had to ask him twice what he’d said before he heard me.

“I said that damned Small and his free-shootin’ friend Carnes were drunk.” They were generally a little drunk, and I said so.

“Well,” Gil said, “they oughtn’ta be drivin’ when they’re like that. Winder oughta know better’n to let them on like that.” Then I lost a few words in the wind. Then he was saying, “Can you imagine any guy damned fool enough to start down that grade like that? He didn’t know where he was, that’s all. He just got scared and saw an open place and let drive. He couldn’t have known where he was, to drive like that. If his horses hadn’t been a sight smarter than he was, that coach would be all piled up at the bottom of the creek right now, and everybody in it with a broken neck.”

“What do you care?” I asked him. “There’s nobody there makes any difference to you now, is there?” I didn’t like being drawn out of my shell just when I was beginning to forget myself.

“Not a damned bit,” he said. And then, “Let her go ahead and break her neck. It’s none of my worry. What was she in such a hell of a hurry to get back up here for, anyway? Wouldn’t her delicate friend keep overnight?”

“All right,” I agreed, “let her break her neck. That’s what I say too.”

I knew that would make him sore, but it would shut him up about Rose Mapen too.

We rode some distance then without any halt, the trees being even on the two sides so the road was plain. Then
there came another, and I knew I’d nearly fallen asleep. I felt unreal and scared. Ahead, men were exclaiming about something in low voices. I saw what they were talking about. To the right, far through the trees through the snow, was a fire burning. It looked very small, and sometimes disappeared when the trees moved in the wind. Then I realized we were at the end of the Ox-Bow valley, and that the fire must be way out toward the center. I judged that when it disappeared it must have been flattening in the wind, and then I decided it was partially concealed by the cabin, and we only saw it when it blew back. But it must have been a big fire at that, because even when it was out of sight I thought I could see a kind of halo of light from around it, like the moon through the thin edges of clouds. It was easy, though, to see how the men on the stage missed it. Having our minds set on those men in the gully on the downgrade, we didn’t know quite what to make of it. Then, with a turn of the wind, we heard a steer bellowing. You couldn’t trust it, of course. Nobody said anything, or moved, and we heard it a second time.

Word came back along the line that we were turning down into the valley, and then to bunch up for last orders. I recovered the sensation that our business was real, instead of everybody being crazy and just wandering around in the mountains. Previously, in my dozing, I’d been remembering a story I’d heard once about the Flying Dutchman, and wondering vaguely if that was the way we were getting. It made a fine picture, twenty-eight riders you could see through on twenty-six horses and two mules nothing but bones, riding around forever through snowstorms in the mountains, looking for three dead rustlers they had to find before their souls could be at peace.