The Ox-Bow Incident (23 page)

“Take it easy, friend,” I told him. “Stay where you are and put your hands up.”

He didn’t understand, but stared at me, and then at Tetley, and then back at me. He didn’t reach for his gun, didn’t even twitch for it, and his face looked scared.

“Put your hands up,” I told him again. He did, looking as if he wanted to cry.

“And keep them there.”

The old man was out of his blanket now too, and standing with his hands raised.

“Gerald, collect their guns,” Tetley said.

“What are you trying to do? What do you want? We haven’t got anything.” It was my man babbling, half out of breath. He was a tall, thin, dark young fellow, with thick black hair, but no Indian or Mex.

“Shut up,” Mapes instructed him. “We’ll tell you when we want you to talk.”

“This is no stickup, brother,” I explained to him. “This is a posse, if that means anything to you.”

“But we haven’t done anything,” he protested. “What have we done?” He wasn’t over his first fright yet.

“Shut up,” Mapes said, with more emphasis.

Young Tetley was sitting in his saddle, staring at the three men.

“Gerry,” Tetley said, in that pistol-shot voice he’d used to wake the men.

The boy dismounted dreamily and picked up the Mex’s gun from the blanket. Then, like a sleepwalker, he came over to my man.

“Behind him,” said Tetley sharply.

The boy stopped and looked around. “What?” he asked.

“Wake up,” Tetley ordered. “I said go behind him. Don’t get between him and Croft.”

“Yes,” Gerald said, and did what he was told. He fumbled around a long time before he found the old man’s gun, which was under his saddle.

“Give the guns to Mark,” Tetley ordered, jerking his head at one of the two riders I didn’t know. Gerald did that, handing them up in a bunch, belts, holsters and all.

It made me ashamed the way Tetley was bossing the kid’s every move, like a mother making a three-year-old do something over that he’d messed up the first try.

“Now,” he said, “go over them all, from the rear. Then shake out the blankets.”

Gerald did as he was told, but he seemed to be waking a little now. His jaw was tight. He found another gun on the Mex, a little pistol like the gamblers carry. It was in an arm-sling under his vest. There was a carbine under the young fellow’s blanket. He shrank from patting the men over, the way he was told to, and when he passed me to give Mark the carbine and pistol, I could hear him breathing hard.

Tetley watched Gerald, but spoke to my prisoner while he was working.

“Are there any more of you?”

The young fellow was steadier. He looked angry now, and started to let his arms down, asking, “May I inquire what business …”

“Shut up,” Mapes said, “and keep them up.”

“It’s all right now, Mapes,” Tetley said. “You can put your hands down now,” he said to the young man. “I asked you, are there any others with you?”

“No,” the kid said.

I didn’t think the kid was lying. Tetley looked at him hard, but I guess he thought it was all right too. He turned his head toward Mark and the other rider I didn’t know.

“Tie their hands,” he ordered.

The young fellow started to come forward again.

“Stay where you are,” Tetley told him quietly, and he stopped. He had a wide, thick-lipped mouth that was nonetheless as sensitive as young Tetley’s thin one, and now it was tight down in the corners. Even so you would have said that mouth was beautiful on some women, Rose Mapen for instance, the fiery or promising kind. And his eyes were big and dark in his thin face, like a girl’s too. His hands were long and bony and nervous, but hung on big, square wrists.

He spoke in a husky voice. “I trust that at least you’ll condescend to tell us what we’re being held for.”

Mapes was still busy being an authority. “Save your talk till it’s asked for,” he advised.

Tetley, though, studied the young man all during the time the two punchers were tying the prisoners on one lass rope and pushing them over to the side of the fire away from the cabin. He looked at them still when they were standing there, shoulder to shoulder, the Mex in the middle, their faces to the fire and their backs to the woods and the little snow that was still falling. It was as if he believed he could solve the whole question of their guilt or innocence by just looking at them and thinking his own thoughts; the occupation pleased him. The Mex was stolid now, the old man remained blank, but the kid was humiliated and angry at being tied. He repeated his question in a manner that didn’t go well with the spot he was in.

Then Tetley told him, “I’d rather you told us,” and smiled that way.

After that he signaled to the parties in the dark in the woods and behind the cabin, dismounted, giving the bridle to his son, and walked over to the fire, where he stood with his legs apart and held out his hands to warm them, rubbing them together. He might have been in front of his own fireplace. Without looking around he ordered more wood put on the fire. All the time he continued to look across the fire at the three men in a row, and continued to smile.

We were all on foot now, walking stiff-legged from sitting the saddle so long in the cold. I got myself a place to sit near the fire, and watched the Mex. He had his chin down on his chest, like he was both guilty and licked, but he was watching everything from under his eyebrows. He looked smart and hard. I’d have guessed he was about thirty, though it was hard to tell, the way it is with an Indian. The lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes and across his forehead were deep and exact, as if they were cut in dark wood with a knife. His skin shone in the firelight. There was no expression on his face, but I knew he was still thinking how to get out. Then all at once his face changed, though you couldn’t have said what the change was in any part of it. I guess in spite of his watchfulness he’d missed
Tetley’s signal, and now he saw Ma and her gang coming up behind us. He looked around quickly, and when he saw the other gangs coming in too he turned back and stared at the ground in front of him. He was changed all over then, the fire gone out of him; he was empty, all done.

The old man stood and stared, as he had from his first awakening. He didn’t seem to have an idea, or even a distinct emotion, merely a vague dread. He’d look at one of us and then another with the same expression, pop-eyed and stupid, his mouth never quite closed, and the gray stubble sticking out all over his jaws.

When the young fellow saw the crowd he said to Tetley, “It appears we’re either important personages or very dangerous. What is this, a vigilance committee?” He shivered before he spoke though. I thought the Mex elbowed him gently.

Tetley kept looking at him and smiling, but didn’t reply. It was hard on their nerve. Ma Grier had ridden up right behind us, and said, before she got down, “No, it ain’t that you’re so difficult, son. It’s just that most of the boys has never seen a real triple hangin’.”

There wasn’t much laughter.

Everybody was in now except the Bartlett boys. Some stayed on their horses, not expecting the business to take much time, and maybe just as glad there were others willing to be more active. Some dismounted and came over to the fire with coils of rope; there was enough rope to hang twenty men with a liberal allowance to each.

As if it had taken all that time for the idea to get through, the young fellow said, “Hanging?”

“That’s right,” Farnley said.

“But why?” asked the kid, beginning to chatter. “What have we done? We haven’t done anything. I told you already we haven’t done anything.”

Then he got hold of himself and said to Tetley, more slowly, “Aren’t you even going to tell us what we’re accused of?”

“Of course,” Tetley said. “This isn’t a mob. We’ll make sure first.”

He half turned his head toward Mapes. “Sheriff,” he said, “tell him.”

“Rustling,” said Mapes. “Rustling?” the kid echoed.

“Yup. Ever heard of it?”

“And murder,” said Farnley, “maybe he’ll have heard of that.”

“Murder?” the kid repeated foolishly. I thought he was going to fold, but he didn’t. He took a brace and just ran his tongue back and forth along his lips a couple of times, as if his throat and mouth were all dried out. He looked around, and it wasn’t encouraging. There was a solid ring of faces, and they were serious.

The old man made a long, low moan like a dog that’s going to howl but changes its mind. Then he said, his voice trembling badly, “You wouldn’t kill us. No, no, you wouldn’t do that, would you?”

Nobody replied. The old man’s speech was thick, and he spoke very slowly, as if the words were heavy, and he was considering them with great concentration. They didn’t mean anything, but you couldn’t get them out of your head when he’d said them. He looked at us so I thought he was going to cry. “Mr. Martin,” he said, “what do we do?” He was begging, and seemed to believe he would get a real answer.

The young man tried to make his voice cheerful, but it was hollow. “It’s all right, Dad. There’s some mistake.”

“No mistake, I guess.” It was old Bartlett speaking. He was standing beside Tetley, looking at the Mex and idly dusting the snow off his flat sombrero. The wind was blowing his wispy hair up like smoke. When he spoke the Mex looked up for a second. He looked down again quickly, but Bartlett grinned. He had a good many teeth out, and his grin wasn’t pretty.

“Know me, eh?” he asked the Mex. The Mex didn’t answer.
Farnley stepped up to him and slapped him across the belly with the back of his hand.

“He’s talking to you, Mister,” he said.

The Mex looked wonderfully bewildered. “No sabbey,” he repeated.

“He don’t speak English,” Mapes told Bartlett.

“I got a different notion,” Bartlett said.

“I’ll make him talk,” Farnley offered. He was eager for it; he was so eager for it he disgusted me, and made me feel sorry for the Mex.

The young fellow appeared bewildered. He was looking at them and listening, but he didn’t seem to make anything of it. He kept closing his eyes more tightly than was natural, and then opening them again quickly, as if he expected to find the whole scene changed. Even without being in the spot he was in, I could understand how he felt. It didn’t look real to me either, the firelight on all the red faces watching in a leaning ring, and the big, long heads of horses peering from behind, and up in the air, detached from it, the quiet men still sitting in the saddles.

When Farnley started to prod the Mex again, Tetley said sharply, “That will do, Farnley.”

“Listen, you,” Farnley said, turning on him, “I’ve had enough of your playing God Almighty. Who in hell picked you for this job anyway? Next thing you’ll be kissing them, or taking them back for Tyler to reform them. We’ve got the bastards; well, what are we waiting for? Let them swing, I say.”

Smith put in his bit too. “Are you going to freeze us to death, Tetley, waiting for these guys to admit they shot a man and stole a bunch of cattle? Maybe you know somebody who likes to talk his head into a noose.”

“There’s the fire. Warm yourself,” Tetley told him. “And you,” he said, looking at Farnley, “control yourself, and we’ll get along better.”

Farnley’s face blanched and stiffened, as it had in the saloon, when he’d heard the news about Kinkaid. I thought
he was going to jump Tetley, but Tetley didn’t even look at him again. He leaned the other way to listen to something Bartlett was saying privately. When he had heard it he nodded and looked at the young fellow across the fire.

“Who’s boss of this outfit?” he asked.

“I am,” the young fellow said.

“And your name’s Martin?”

“Donald Martin.”

“What outfit?”

“My own.”

“Where from?”

“Pike’s Hole.”

The men didn’t believe it. The man Tetley called Mark said, “He’s not from Pike’s, or any place in the Hole, I’ll swear to that.”

For the first time there was real antagonism instead of just doubt and waiting.

“Mark there lives in Pike’s,” Tetley told the kid, smiling. “Want to change your story?”

“I just moved in three days ago,” the kid said.

“We’re wasting time, Willard,” Bartlett said.

“We’ll get there,” Tetley said. “I want this kept regular for the Judge.”

Not many appreciated his joking. He was too slow and pleasurable for a job like this. Most of us would have had to do it in a hurry. If you have to hang a man, you have to, but it’s not my kind of fun to stand around and watch him keep hoping he may get out of it.

Tetley may have noticed the silence, but he didn’t show it. He went on asking Martin questions.

“Where did you come from before that?”

“Ohio,” he said angrily, “Sinking Spring, Ohio. But not just before. I was in Los Angeles. I suppose that proves something.”

“What way did you come up?”

“By Mono Lake. Look, Mister, this isn’t getting us anywhere, is it? We’re accused of murder and rustling, you say.
Well, we haven’t done any rustling, and we haven’t killed anybody. You’ve got the wrong men.”

“We’ll decide as to that. And I’m asking the questions.”

“God,” the kid broke out. He stared around wildly at the whole bunch of us. “God, don’t anybody here know I came into Pike’s Hole? I drove right through the town; I drove a Conestoga wagon with six horses right through the middle of the town. I’m on Phil Baker’s place; what they call the Phil Baker place, up at the north end.”

Tetley turned to Mark.

“Phil Baker moved out four years ago,” Mark said. “The place is a wreck, barns down, sagebrush sticking up through the porch.”

Tetley looked back at Martin.

“I met him in Los Angeles,” Martin explained. “I bought the place from him there. I paid him four thousand dollars for it.”

“Mister, you got robbed,” Mark told him. “Even if Baker’d owned the place you’da been robbed, but he didn’t. He didn’t even stay on it long enough to have squatter’s rights.” We couldn’t help grinning at that one. Mark said to Tetley, “Baker’s place is part of Peter Wilde’s ranch now.”

Martin was nearly crying. “You can’t hang me for being a sucker,” he said.

“That depends on the kind of sucker you are.”