The Ox-Bow Incident (26 page)

“Will the others want to write?” Davies asked him.

“You can ask Juan,” Martin said, looking at the Mex. Whenever he looked at the Mex he had that perplexed expression of wanting to say something and deciding not to. “It’s no use with the old man, though,” he said, looking up at Davies and remembering to smile to show he was grateful.
“He wouldn’t know what to say, or how to say it. I don’t believe he has anybody to write to, for that matter. He forgets people if they’re not right around him.”

When Amigo asked him, Juan said no, he didn’t care to write. For some reason he seemed to think the idea of his writing to anyone was humorous.

Ma was examining the rustlers’ packs, which had been propped against the cabin wall. She was going to get a meal for the Mex. She drew articles out, naming them for everybody to hear as she removed them. There was a lot more than three men could want for a meal or two. There was a whole potato sack of very fresh beef, which had been rolled up in paper and then put in the sack, and the sack put in the lee of the cabin, half buried in an old drift. There was coffee too.

When Ma had called off part of her list Smith yelled to her to fix a spread for everybody. He explained loudly that if they had to freeze and lose sleep because somebody was afraid of the dark, they didn’t have to starve too, and that it wasn’t exactly robbery because by the time it was eaten that food wouldn’t belong to anybody anyway. He also hinted that the beef probably belonged to some of us anyhow. He had managed to bring a bottle along, and now that there was no immediate excitement he pulled on it frequently. He was a good deal impressed with how funny he was.

A few men looked around hard at Smith, but most pretended that they were thinking about something and hadn’t heard him. Moore spoke up though, and told Ma he didn’t want anything; then others of us told her the same thing. Smith called us queasy, but when nobody answered he didn’t go any further. He knew what we meant. You can’t eat a man’s food before him and then hang him.

When Ma set to cooking it, though, with Sparks helping her, many changed their minds. There was a belly-searching odor from that meat propped on forked sticks and dripping and scorching over the coals. None of us had
had a real meal since midday, and some not then, and the air was cold and snowy and with a piny edge. It carried the meat smell very richly.

Gil made me drink some of the coffee because my teeth were chattering. I wasn’t really so cold as thinned out by the loss of blood. Coffee was better than the whisky had been, and after it I sneaked a bit of the meat too, being careful that Martin didn’t see me eat it. I only chewed a little, though, and knew I didn’t want it. I took more coffee.

Sparks took meat and bread and coffee on their own plates and in their own cups to the three prisoners. The Mex ate with big mouthfuls, taking his time and enjoying it. The strong muscles in his jaws worked in and out so the firelight shone on them when he chewed. He washed it down with long draughts of coffee too hot for me to have touched, and nodded his head at Ma to show it was all good. When he was done eating he took a pull of whisky from Gil, rolled and lit a cigarette, and sat cross-legged, drawing the smoke in two streams up his nostrils and blowing it out between his lips in strong jets that bellied out into clouds at the end. He watched the fire and the smoke from his cigarette, and sometimes smiled to himself reminiscently.

Old Hardwick ate his meat and bread too, but didn’t know he was doing it. He chewed with the food showing out of his mouth, and didn’t stop staring. Sometimes he continued to chew when he had already swallowed. Some of the bread he pulled into little pieces and dropped while he was chewing the meat.

Martin drank some coffee, but refused food and whisky. He was holding the notebook and pencil and thinking. It was a hard letter to write. He would stare at the fire with glazed eyes, wake up with a shiver and look around him, put the pencil to the paper, and then relapse into that staring again. It was a long time before he really began to write, and then he twice tore out a page on which there were only a few words, and began again. Finally, he seemed to forget
where he was, and what was going to happen to him, and wrote slowly and steadily, occasionally crossing out a line or so with two slow, straight strokes.

Gil made me lie down with a couple of blankets around me and my back against the cabin, but between Ma and Tetley sitting and eating and smoking and not talking much, I could see Martin’s face and his hand busy writing.

The young Bartletts were relieved and came in, but they wouldn’t eat either, but drank coffee and smoked. It was very quiet, all the men sitting around except the guards. Tetley insisted that the guards stand up. Some of the men talked in low voices, and now and then one of them would laugh, but stop quickly. Tetley kept looking over at Gerald, who hadn’t eaten or even taken any coffee, and who wasn’t smoking, but sitting there picking up little sticks and digging hard at the ground with them, and then realizing he had them, and tossing them away. When another squall of wind brought the snow down in waves again, men looked up at the sky, where there wasn’t anything to see. The wind wasn’t steady, however, and shortly the snow thinned out again. Most of it had shaken from its loose lodging on the branches of the pines. I became drowsy, and felt that I was observing a distant picture. After eating, Gabe Hart had rolled up and gone to sleep just beyond me, but all the others were trying to stay awake, though some of them would nod, and then jerk up and stare around as if something had happened or they felt a long time had passed. Only young Tetley kept the scene from going entirely dreamlike. Between times of playing with his sticks he would rise abruptly and walk out to the edge of the dark and stand there with his back turned, and then suddenly turn and come back to the fire and stand there for a long time before he sat down again. After the third or fourth time his father leaned toward him when he sat down, and spoke to him. The boy remained seated then, but always with those busy hands.

Then I slept myself, after short broken dozes. I woke
suddenly, with my shoulder aching badly, my head light again, and my mouth dry. I was scared about something, and tried to get out of my blanket quickly and stand up, but a weight was holding me under. I thought that if it should stop pressing I’d take off like a leaf in the wind. Only the ache seemed real, and the weight.

The weight was Gil. He had a hand on my ribs beneath the bad arm, and was holding me down as gently as he could, but heavily.

“What’s eating on you?” he asked.

I told him nothing was, and he helped me to sit up and lean against the cabin. Having slept, I felt weak and miserable. The shoulder was round and tight as a river boulder and the ache reached to my breastbone in front and my spine in back. In the center of it there was a small and ambitious core of fire.

“You were jabbering,” Gil said, “and flopping around like a fish out of water. I thought maybe you was out of your head.”

“No, I’m all right,” I told him.

“You must have been dreaming,” Gil said. “You was scared to death when I took hold of you.”

I said I couldn’t remember.

“I wouldn’ta woke you up,” he apologized, “only I was afraid you’d start that shoulder bleeding again.”

“I’m glad you did,” I told him. I didn’t like the idea of lying there talking in my sleep.

“Have I been asleep long?” I asked him.

“An hour or two, I guess.”

“An hour or two?” I felt like a traitor, as if I’d wasted the little time those three men had by sleeping myself.

“You didn’t miss anything,” Gil said, “except Smith working on Ma.”

That was still going on. They were sitting in front of us, and Smith had one arm around her thick middle and was holding a bottle up to her. He wasn’t making any headway, though. She was solid as a stump.

Martin had finished his letter, and was sitting hunched over with his forehead in his hands. I saw him stare at Smith and Ma once, and then bend his head again, locking his hands behind it and pulling down hard, like he was stretching his neck and shoulders. Then he relaxed again, and put his arms across his knees and his head down on them. He was having a hard time of it, I judged.

Sparks was busy with old Hardwick, squatting in front of him and exhorting and now and then taking hold of him gently to make him pay attention. But the old man was scared out of what little wits he had and wasn’t listening, but still staring and talking to himself. Davies was trying to get Tetley to talk about something he was showing him, but failing. The Mex was sitting there drowsily, with his elbows on his knees and his forearms hanging loosely between his legs.

Only two men were standing, one on guard with a carbine across his arm, and Farnley, who had moved around to put his back against the big tree, and was much more awake than the guard.

There was no wind, and no snow falling, but no stars showing either; just thick, dark cold.

I heard Tetley making a retort to Davies. It was the first time either of them had raised his voice, and Davies nervously motioned him to be quiet, but he finished what he was saying clearly enough so I could hear it. “It may be a fine letter; apparently, from what you say, it’s a very fine letter. But if it’s an honest letter it’s none of my business to read it, and if it isn’t I don’t want to.”

Martin had heard. He lifted his head and looked across at them.

“Is that my letter you’re showing?” he asked.

“It’s yours,” Tetley told him. I knew how he was smiling when he said it.

“What are you doing, showing my letter?” Martin asked Davies. His voice had aroused the whole circle to watch them now. He repeated his question more sharply.

Smith gave up his game with Ma and rose unsteadily and came toward Martin, hitching his belt as he stumbled.

“Don’t go to raising your voice like that, rustler,” he ordered thickly.

“Never mind, Monty,” Davies said. “He’s right. I told him I’d keep it for him.”

Smith stood waveringly and looked around at Davies. His face was knotted with the effort to look disgusted and hostile and to see straight at the same time. “Well,” he said, “if you like to suck the hind tit …”

“Sit down before you fall down, Monty,” Ma advised him.

“Nobody’s gonna fall down,” Smith assured her. “But I’ll be damned,” he said, squaring around on Martin again, “if I’d let any yellow, thievin’ rustler raise his voice at me for tryin’ to do him a favor. It’s a little late to get fussy about privacy when you got the knot under your ear already.”

This time Tetley told him to shut up, and he did.

Martin paid no attention to Smith. He stood up and spoke to Davies. “If I remember rightly, all I asked was that you keep that letter and make sure it was delivered.”

“I’m sorry,” Davies said, “I was just trying to prove …”

Martin began to move across toward Davies. The veins were standing out in his neck. Several men scrambled to their feet. Davies rose too, defensively. The guard didn’t know what to do. He took a step or two after Martin, but then stood there holding his carbine like it was a live rattler. Farnley came down from his stand against the tree. He had his gun out when he got to the fire.

“Sit down, you, and pipe down,” he ordered.

Martin stood still, but he didn’t show any signs of retreating or of sitting down. He didn’t even look around at Farnley.

Mapes was standing up behind Tetley. He ordered Martin to sit down also, and drew his gun when Martin didn’t move or even glance at him.

“It’s enough,” Martin said in a smothered voice to Davies,
“to be hanged by a pack of bullying outlaws without having your private thoughts handed around to them for a joke.”

“I’ve said I’m sorry,” Davies reminded him, sharply for him. “I was merely doing …”

“I don’t give a damn what you were doing. I didn’t write that letter to be passed around. I wrote that letter to—well, it’s none of your business, and it’s none of the business of any of these other murdering bastards.”

“Take it easy on that talk,” Farnley said behind him.

“I made no promise,” Davies told Martin.

“All right, you made no promise. I should have known I’d need a promise. Or would that have done any good? I thought there was one white man among you. Well, I was wrong.”

Then he became general in his reference. He waved an arm around to take us all in. “But what good would an oath do, in a pack like this, an oath to do what any decent man would do by instinct? You eat our food in front of us and joke about it. You make love publicly in front of men about to die, and are able to sleep while they wait. What good would an oath do where there’s not so much conscience in the lot as a good dog has?

“Give me that letter,” he ordered, taking another step toward Davies.

“I’ll see that she gets it,” Davies said stiffly.

“I wouldn’t have her touch it,” Martin said.

Tetley stood up. “That’s enough,” he said. “You’ve been told to go back and sit down. If I were you, I’d do that. Give him the letter, Davies.”

Still holding the letter, Davies said quietly, “Your wife ought to hear from you, son. None of us could be so kind as that letter; and she’d want it to keep.”

Martin stared at him. His face changed, the wrath dying out of it. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m sorry. Yes, keep it, please, and see that she gets it.”

“Hey, the Mex,” Ma yelled. She was pointing up to the
edge of the woods, where the horses were tied. There was the Mex, working at the rope on one of the bays, the horse nearest the woods on the road side. There was a general yell and scramble. Somebody yelled to spread, he might have a gun. Several yelled to shoot. They circled out fast, snapping hammers as they ran. They were mad and ashamed at having been caught napping. Tetley was as angry as anyone, but he kept his head.

“Mapes, Winder,” he called out, “keep an eye on the other two. You,” he said to Davies, “if you’re part of this trick—” but didn’t finish it, but went around the fire quickly to where he could see better.

Martin stood where he was, and old Hardwick, when he saw the guns come out, put his hands up over his eyes, like a little, scared kid.