The Ox-Bow Incident (7 page)

“Farnley,” he said, in a voice which was too high from being forced, “Farnley, if such an awful thing has actually occurred, it is the more reason that we should retain our self-possession. In such a position, Farnley, we are likely to lose our reason and our sense of justice.

“Men,” he orated to us, “let us not act hastily; let us not do that which we will regret. We must act, certainly, but we must act in a reasoned and legitimate manner, not as a lawless mob. It is not mere blood that we want; we are not Indians, savages to be content with a miserable, sneaking revenge. We desire justice, and justice has never been obtained in haste and strong feeling.” I thought he intended to say more, but he stopped there and looked at us pathetically. He talked with no more conviction than he walked.

The men at the edge of the walk stirred and spit and felt of their faces. It was not Osgood, really, who was delaying them, but uncertainty, and perhaps the fear that they were going to hunt somebody they knew. They had been careful a long time.

Davies saw that Osgood had failed. His mouth tightened downward.

Farnley paid no attention, but having admitted he would wait, just sat his saddle rigidly. His horse knew something was wrong, and kept swinging his stern, his heels chopping. Farnley let him pivot. He reared a little and swung his tail back toward the Reverend. Osgood backed away hurriedly. One of the punchers laughed. Osgood did look queer, feinting and wavering out there. Moore looked back at us angrily. Farnley’s back had gone stiff under the cowhide vest. The man who had laughed pulled his hat down and muttered.

“We’ll organize a posse right here, Jeff,” Moore promised.
“If we go right, we’ll get what we’re after.” For Moore, that was begging. He waited, looking up at Farnley.

Then Farnley pulled his horse around slowly, so he sat facing us.

“Well, make your posse,” he said. He sat watching us as if he hated us all. His cheeks were twitching.

Canby was still leaning in the door behind us, his towel in his hand. “Somebody had better get the sheriff, first thing,” he advised. He didn’t sound as if it mattered to him whether we got the sheriff or not.

“And Judge Tyler,” Osgood said. He was impressed by the suggestion, and came over to stand in front of us, closer. “Judge Tyler must be notified,” he said.

“To hell with that,” somebody told him. That started others. “We know what that’ll mean,” yelled another. A third shouted, “We know what that’ll mean is right. We don’t need no trail for this business. We’ve heard enough of Tyler and his trails.” The disturbance spread. Men began to get on their horses.

The kid, Greene, had been forgotten too long. He pushed through toward Osgood with his fist doubled. But Osgood faced him well enough. Greene stopped at the edge of the walk. “This ain’t just rustling,” he yelled.

“Rustling is enough,” Bartlett told him; then he pulled off his hat and waved it above his head. His head looked big when it was uncovered. There was a pasted-down line around it from the sweat under his hatband. He curled his upper lip when he talked angrily, showing his yellow, gappy teeth and making his mustache jerk.

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” he cried. He had a big, hollow voice when he was angry enough to lift it. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had enough rustling. Do we have rights as men and cattlemen, or don’t we? We know what Tyler is. If we wait for Tyler, or any man like Tyler,” he added, glaring at Osgood, “if we wait, I tell you, there won’t be one head of anybody’s cattle left in
the meadows by the time we get justice.” He ridiculed the word “justice” by his tone. “For that matter,” he called, raising his voice still higher, “what is justice? Is it justice that we sweat ourselves sick and old every damned day in the year to make a handful of honest dollars, and then lose it all in one night to some miserable greaser because Judge Tyler, whatever God made him, says we have to fold our hands and wait for his eternal justice? Waiting for Tyler’s kind of justice, we’d all be beggars in a year.

“What led rustlers into this valley in the first place?” he bellowed. “This is no kind of a place for rustlers. I’ll tell you what did it. Judge Tyler’s kind of justice, that’s what did it. They don’t wait for that kind of justice in Texas any more, do they? No, they don’t. They know they can pick a rustler as quick as any fee-gorging lawyer that ever took his time in any courtroom. They go and get the man, and they string him up. They don’t wait for that kind of justice in San Francisco any more, do they? No, they don’t. They know they can pick a swindler as well as any overfed judge that ever lined his pockets with bribes. The Vigilance Committee does something—and it doesn’t take them six months to get started either, the way it does justice in some places.

“By the Lord God, men, I ask you,” he exhorted, “are we going to slink on our own range like a pack of sniveling boys, and wait till we can’t buy the boots for our own feet, before we do anything?

“Well, I’m not, for one,” he informed us, with hoarse determination. “Maybe if we do one job with our own hands, the law will get a move on. Maybe. And maybe it never will. But one thing is sure. If we do this job ourselves, and now, it will be one that won’t have to be done again. Yes, and what’s more, I tell you we won’t ever have to do any such job again, not here.

“But, by God,” he begged, “if we stand here yapping and whining and wagging our tails till Judge Tyler pats us on
the head, we’ll have every thieving Mex and Indian and runaway Reb in the whole territory eating off our own plates. I say, stretch the bastards,” he yelped, “stretch them.”

He was sweating, and he stared around at us, rolling his bloodshot eyes.

He had us excited. Gil and I were quiet, because men had moved away from us, but I was excited too. I wanted to say something that would square me, but I couldn’t think what. But Bartlett wasn’t done. He wiped his face on his sleeve, and when he spoke again his voice went up so high it cracked, but we could understand him. Faces around me were hard and angry, with narrow, shining eyes.

“And that’s not all,” Bartlett was crying, piping. “Like the boy here says, it’s not just a rustler we’re after, it’s a murderer. Kinkaid’s lying out there now, with a hole in his head, a Goddamned rustler’s bullet hole. Let that go, and I’m telling you, men, there won’t be anything safe, not our cattle, not our homes, not our lives, not even our women. I say we’ve got to get them. I have two sons, and we all know how to shoot; yes, and how to tie a knot in a rope, if that’s worrying you, a knot that won’t slip.

“I’m for you, Jeff,” he shouted at Farnley, waving his hat in a big arc in front of him. “I’m going to get a gun and a rope, and I’ll be back. If nobody else will do it, you and I and the boys will do it. We’ll do it alone.”

Farnley raised one hand, carelessly, in a kind of salute, but his face was still tight, expressionless and twitching. At his salute the men all shouted. They told him loudly that they were with him too. Bartlett stirred us, but Farnley, sitting there in the sun, saying nothing, now stirred us even more. If we couldn’t do anything for Kinkaid now, we could for Farnley. We could help Farnley get rid of his lump. He became a hero, just sitting there, the figure which concentrated our purpose.

Thinking about it afterward I was surprised that Bartlett succeeded so easily. None of the men he was talking to
owned any cattle or any land. None of them had any property but their horses and their outfits. None of them were even married, and the kind of women they got a chance to know weren’t likely to be changed by what a rustler would do to them. Some out of that many were bound to have done a little rustling on their own, and maybe one or two had even killed a man. But they weren’t thinking of those things then, any more than I was. Old Bartlett was amazing. It seemed incredible that so much ferocity hadn’t killed him, weak and shaky as he appeared. Instead, it had made him appear straighter and stronger.

He turned around and pushed through us in a hurry, not even putting his hat on. I could hear him wheezing when he shoved past me, and his lower lip stuck out, reaching for his mustache.

Osgood called to the men. “Listen, men,” he called. Most of them were already on their horses. “Listen, men,” he called again. Old Bartlett stopped out in the sun on the walk beyond us. He was going to come back and collar the preacher. “Listen to me, men. This insane violence …”

Gil walked over close to Osgood. “You listen to me, preacher,” he said. “I thought I told you once to shut up.” Osgood couldn’t help backing away from him. He backed off the walk, and stumbled in the street. This mortified him so he grasped his forehead with both hands for a moment, as if trying vainly to get himself back together again; or else to protect his skull. When we all laughed, businesslike, contemptuous laughter, in a short chorus, old Bartlett grinned and turned around and went off up the walk again.

Suddenly Osgood uncovered his head and ran to Davies, holding both hands out in front of him, first like a child running to beg for something, then weaving them back and forth while he talked.

“They won’t listen to me, Mr. Davies,” he babbled. “They won’t listen. They never would. Perhaps I’m weak. Any man is weak when nobody cares for the things that
mean something to him. But they’ll listen to you. You know how to talk to them, Davies. You tell them.

“Oh, men,” he cried out, coming back at us, “think, won’t you; think. If you were mistaken, if …”

He gave up, and stared at us, still moving his hands like birds with their legs caught.

Davies, without moving away from Farnley, said clearly, “Mr. Osgood is right, men. We should wait until …”

“What do you know about it?” Gil asked him.

A voice from the door called, “The trouble with Davies is that he can’t see no profit in this. It’s hard to move Davies when he can’t see no profit. Now, if you’d offer to buy the rope from him …” It was Smith. He still had a whisky glass in his hand, and he’d pushed past Canby and was standing on the top step with his legs apart and his other hand in his belt, where it hung under his belly.

Davies did look sharp at that, but Moore acted for him. He reached up and grabbed Smith by the belt, and pulled him down among us.

“If we go, you’re going, porky.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Smith laughed. He pushed Moore off. “I wouldn’t miss it,” he said. “The only thing would get me out faster, would be your necktie party, Moore.” A few men watching them laughed, and this encouraged Smith. “Who knows,” he added, “maybe this
is
yours.”

They’d all been afraid for months that they’d know the man. This was a hit. Moore, though, just looked Smith in the eye until the big drunk couldn’t face him. Then he said, “I’ll remember that. I’ll see that you get to handle a rope!”

Gil had been pleased, his words to Osgood having made things better for us. Now suddenly he was quieter, and sober.

Canby said, “You’re wasting a lot of time. Whoever you’re after has made five miles while you argued.”

“You gotta get guns,” Greene piped. “They shot Kinkaid. They got guns.”

Only two or three of the men had guns. Gil and I had ours, because we were on the loose and felt better with them. They called to Farnley they’d be back and went off after guns, some of them riding, some running on the walks.

To the rest of us Davies said, “There are only a few of you now. Will you listen to me?” Moore and Osgood were looking at us too.

“We listened once,” Smith said, “listened, and heard nothing. As for me,” he grinned, “I think I’ll have a couple of drinks on the house. I want to be primed.”

Canby blocked the door. “Not here, you don’t,” he said. “Two more and you’d have to be tied on. If you went.”

“It’s past talk, Davies,” a puncher told him. “You can see that.” He didn’t sound angry.

“Yes,” Davies said. “Yes, I guess you’re right.”

“I’m going to have a drink,” Gil said; “I want a hell of a long drink.”

I told him that suited me. There were only a few men left now, talking quietly in the blue shadow of the arcade. Up and down the street you could hear the others, their boots on the boardwalk or their horses trotting. A few called to each other, reminding that it might be a long ride, or to bring a rope, or advising where a gun might be borrowed, since most of them were from ranches outside the village. The sun was still bright in the street, but it was a late-in-the-afternoon light. And the wind had changed. The spring feeling, warm when it was still, chilly when the air stirred, was gone. Even right out in the sun it was pretty cold now. I went out in the street to take a look west. The clouds over the mountains had pushed up still more, and were dark under their bellies.

Davies stood on the walk while I was looking at the sky. I thought he was waiting for me, and took longer than I had to, hoping he would go in. But there’s only about so much to look at in one sky; I’m no painter. I gave it up and he came in with me, though not saying anything. He stood up
to drink with us too. There were half a dozen of us drinking. Canby had left the door open, and through it I could see Farnley still sitting in his saddle in the sun. Nobody was going to change his mind with Farnley sitting there. Gil kept looking out at him too. Gil felt partly to blame for how hard Farnley was taking this; or maybe it was the ten dollars.

“What made you so hot for a drink?” I asked Gil, to keep ahead of Davies.

“Nothing; I’m thirsty,” he said, drinking one and pouring another.

“Yes, there is too,” he admitted. “I’d forgot all about it until Moore told Smith he could hold a rope that way. I was layin’ up in Montana that winter, stayin’ with an old woman who put out good grub. Sittin’ right on her front porch I saw them hang three men on one limb.”

He took his other drink down. That didn’t worry me now. Feeling this way he could drink twenty and not know it. He poured another. He talked low and quick, as if he didn’t mind my hearing it, but didn’t want anyone else to.

“They kicked a barrel out from under each one of them, and the poor bastards kept trying to reach them with their toes.” He looked down at his drink. “They didn’t tie their legs,” he said, “just their arms.”