The Ox-Bow Incident (8 page)

After a minute he said, “That was an official posse though, sheriff and all. All the same …” He started his third drink, but slowly, like he didn’t want it much.

“Rustlers?” I asked him.

“Held up a stagecoach,” he told me. “The driver was shot.”

“Well, they had it coming,” I said.

“One of them was a boy,” he said, “just a kid. He was scared to death and kept crying, and telling them he hadn’t done it. When they put the rope around his neck his knees gave out. He fell off the barrel and nearly choked.”

I could see how Gil felt. It wasn’t a nice thing to remember with a job of this kind in front of you. But I could
tell Davies was listening to Gil. He wasn’t looking at us, but he was just sipping his drink, and being too quiet.

“We got to watch ourselves, Gil,” I told him, very low, and looking up at the woman with the parrot.

“To hell with them,” he said. But he didn’t say it loudly.

“Greene was all mixed up,” I said, still muttering over my chin. “He wasn’t sure of anything except Kinkaid was shot in the head. But he thought it was about noon.”

“I know,” Gil said.

Then he said, “They’re gettin’ back already. Hot for it, ain’t they?” It sounded like remembering that Montana job had changed his whole way of looking at things.

I could tell without turning who was coming. There wasn’t a big, flat-footed clop-clop like horses make on hard-pack, but a kind of edgy clip-clip-clip. There was only one man around here would ride a mule, at least on this kind of business. That was Bill Winder, who drove the stage between Reno and Bridger’s Wells. A mule is tough all right; a good mule can work two horses into the ground and not know it. But there’s something about a mule a man can’t get fond of. Maybe it’s just the way a mule is, just as you feel it’s the end with a man who’s that way. But you can’t make a mule part of the way you live, like your horse is; it’s like he had no insides, no soul. Instead of a partner you’ve just got something else to work on along with steers. Winder didn’t like mules either, but that’s why he rode them. It was against his religion to get on a horse; horses were for driving.

“It’s Winder,” Gil said, and looked at Davies and grinned. “The news gets around, don’t it?”

I looked at Davies too, in the glass, but he wasn’t showing anything, just staring at his drink and minding his own thoughts.

Winder wouldn’t help Davies any; we knew that. He was edgy the same way Gil was, but angry, not funning, and you couldn’t get at him with an idea.

We saw him stop beside Farnley and say something and,
when he got his answer, shake his head angrily and spit, and pull his mule into the tie rail with a jerk. Waiting wasn’t part of Winder’s plan of life either. He believed in action first and make your explanation to fit.

Gabe Hart was with him, on another mule. Gabe was his hostler, a big, ape-built man, stronger than was natural, but weak-minded; not crazy, but childish, like his mind had never grown up. He was dirty too; he slept in the stables with his horses, and his knees and elbows were always out of his clothes, and his long hair and beard always had bits of hay and a powder of grain chaff in them. Gabe was gentle, though; not a mean streak in him, like there generally is in stupid, very strong men. Gabe was the only man I ever knew could really love a mule, and with horses he was one of them. That’s why Winder kept him. Gabe was no use for anything else, but he could do everything with horses, making clucking, senseless talk in his little, high voice and just letting them feel his hands, which were huge even for a man his size. And Winder liked his horses hard to handle. Outside of horses there were only two things in Gabe’s life, Winder and sitting. Winder was his god, and sitting was his way of worshipping. Gabe could sit for hours if there wasn’t something to do to a horse. Sometimes I’ve thought Gabe just lived for the times Winder took him on the coach because he had a really ugly team or had some heavy loading to do. Riding on the coach got everything into Gabe’s life that mattered, Winder, sitting and horses, and he’d sit up there on the high seat, holding on like a scared kid, with his hair and tatters blowing and solemn joy in his huge face with the little, empty eyes.

Winder had a Winchester with him, but he left it against the tie rail and came in, Gabe behind him, and looked at Davies like a stranger, and ordered a whisky.

Canby offered Gabe a drink too, just to see him refuse it. He looked at Canby and grinned to show he meant to be pleasant and shook his head. Then he stood looking slowly
around as if he’d never been in the place before, though he’d followed Winder in, almost every day for years.

Winder winked at Canby. “Gabe don’t care nothin’ for drinkin’ or smokin’ or women, do you, Gabe?”

Gabe grinned and shook his head again, and then looked down at the floor like he was going to blush. Winder cackled.

“He’s a good boy, Gabe is,” he said.

This joke was as old as Canby’s and Gil’s about the woman in the picture.

Winder drank one down, put his glass out to be filled again, and looked at Davies. He was a short, stringy, blond man, with a freckled face with no beard or mustache but always a short, reddish stubble. He had pale blue eyes with a constant hostile stare, as if he was trying to pick a fight even when he laughed.

“They’re takin’ their time, ain’t they?” he said.

“They might as well,” Davies said.

“Yeh?” Winder demanded.

“They haven’t much to go on yet,” Davies told him.

“They got enough, from what I heard.”

“Maybe, but not enough to know what to do.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing they don’t know who did it.”

“That’s what we aim to find out, ain’t it?”

“You can’t tell who it might be.”

“What the hell does that matter? I’d string any son-of-a-bitchin’ rustler like that.” He slapped the bar. “If he was my own brother, I would,” he said furiously.

Gabe made a little noise like he was clearing his throat.

“You’re getting Gabe stirred up,” Canby said.

“Yes, suh, if he was mah own brothah,” Gabe said in his high voice. He was watching Davies, and swinging his hands back and forth on the ends of the long arms, close to his legs. We all knew there were two things made Gabe angry, seeing Winder angry, and being teased about niggers.
Winder could handle him about getting mad himself, which was a good thing, he was mad so much; but Gabe was from Mississippi, and the worst about niggers I ever knew. He wouldn’t eat where they’d eaten, sleep where they’d slept, or be seen talking to one. That seemed to be the one idea he’d kept from his earlier days, and it had grown on him.

“Well, there’s another thing,” Davies said.

“What’s that?” Winder wanted to know.

“What’s that?” Gabe asked too.

“Shut up, Gabe,” Winder told him. “This ain’t none of your affair. Go sit down.”

Gabe looked at him like he didn’t understand.

“Go on, sit down.” Winder waved at the chairs along the back wall.

Gabe shuffled back to them and sat down, leaning on his knees and looking at the floor between his feet, so all you could see was the swell of his big shoulders, like the shoulders of a walrus, and the top of his head with the hair matted and straw in it, and those tremendous, thick paws hanging limp between his knees. He made a strong smell of horses and manure in the room, even through the stale beer odor.

“This sorta thing’s gotta stop,” Winder said, “no matter who’s doin’ it.”

“It has,” Davies agreed. “But we don’t know how many of them there are; or which way they went, either. There’s no use going off half-cocked.”

“What the hell way would they go?” Winder asked him. “Out the south end by the draw, wouldn’t they? There ain’t no other way. They wouldn’t head right back up this way, would they, with the whole place layin’ for them? You’re damn shootin’ they wouldn’t.”

“No,” Davies said. He hadn’t finished his drink; was just sipping it, but he filled the glass again and asked Winder, “Have one with me?”

“I don’t mind,” Winder said.

Canby filled Winder’s glass again, and then Gil’s. He held the bottle at me, but I shook my head.

“We might as well sit down,” Davies said. “They’re waiting on Bartlett anyway.” He included Gil and me in the invitation. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t see how to get out of it. We sat down at the table where we’d been playing cards. Canby had that want-to-grin look in his eyes.

Winder pushed his hat back. “All the more reason to get going,” he said.

“No particular hurry, though. If they’re from around here, they aren’t going far. If they aren’t, they’re going a long ways, too long for a few hours to matter when they’ve already got a big start.”

“The sooner we get started, the sooner we get them.”

“It looks that way to me, too,” Gil said.

I tried to kick him under the table. I had a feeling Davies was working most on us anyway. He knew better than to think he could reach Winder.

“And how do you know they’ve got a start?” Winder asked.

“That’s what young Greene said.”

“Oh, him.”

“He was tangled, but if he had anything straight it was the time. He figured Kinkaid must have been killed about noon.”

“Well?”

“It’s four-thirty now. Say they have a four-hour start. You aren’t going to ride your head off to pick that up, are you?”

“Maybe not,” Winder admitted.

“No,” Davies said. “It’s a long job at best, and stern chase. And it’s more than five hundred miles to the first border that will do them any good. Part of that will be a tracking job too. The same way if they’re heading for a hide-out to let things cool. It’ll be dark in a couple of hours; three anyway. We won’t even get down to the draw in that time.”

“It’s that much of a start if we get there tonight,” Winder said.

“Yes, but there’s no hurry. We can take our time, and form this posse right.”

“Who the hell said anything about a posse?” Winder flared.

“He did,” Gil put in; “but it didn’t seem to go down so good.”

“Why the hell would it?”

“Risley’s here,” Davies said.

“Risley’s been here all summer,” Winder said. “It didn’t stop Kinkaid gettin’ killed, did it?”

“One man can’t be every place,” I had to chip in. “This is a big valley.”

Gil grinned at me to say now who needed a kick.

“He could be a hell of a lot more places than Risley is,” Winder told me, staring across at me so I wanted to get up and let him have one.

“Risley’s a good man,” Davies said, “and a good sheriff.”

“You ’mind me of Tyler and the preacher. What have they got us, your good men? A thousand head of cattle gone and a man killed, that’s what they got us. We gotta do this ourselves. One good fast job, without no fiddlin’ with legal papers, and that’s all there’ll be to it.”

Davies had his hands out on the table in front of him, knobby fingers extended and fingertips together, and was looking at them. He didn’t answer.

“It’s like those damn, thievin’ railroads,” Winder said, staring around at all three of us to dare us to disagree. “They got the law with them; they’re a legal business, they are. They killed off men, didn’t they? You damn shootin’ they did; one for every tie their son-of-a-bitchin’ rails is laid on. And they robbed men of honest to God men’s jobs from Saint Looey to Frisco, didn’t they? And for what? For a lot of plush-bottomed, soft-handed bastards, who couldn’t even drive their own wagons, to ride across the country and
steal everything they could lay their hands on in Californy the same way they been doin’ in the East for a hundred years. That’s what for. And they got the law with them, ain’t they? Well, it’s men like us shoulda taken the law in their own hands right then. By God, I hate the stink of an Injun, but an Injun smells sweet comparin’ to a railroad man. If we’d wanted to keep this country for decent people, we’da helped the Injuns bust up the railroad, yes, by God, we woulda. And that’s the same law you’re tryin’ to hold us up for, ain’t it—the kind of law that’ll give a murderer plenty of time to get away and cover up, and then help him find his excuses by the book. You and your posses and waitin’. I say get goin’ before we’re cooled off, and the lily liver that’s in half these new dudes gets time to pisen ’em again, so we gotta just set back and listen to Judge Tyler spout his law and order crap. Jesus, it makes me sick.”

He spit aside on the floor, and then glared at Davies.

That hatred of the railroad was Winder’s only original notion, and when he got mad that always came in some way. Everything else was what he’d heard somebody, or most everybody, say, only he always got angry enough to make it sound like a conviction. His trouble was that he was a one-love man, and stagecoaching was his one love. Guard and driver, he’d been in it from the start with Wells Fargo on the Santa Fe, but it had such a short life he’d outlasted it, and by now, 1885, Lincoln dead and Grant out, the railroads had everything but these little sidelines, like Winder’s. The driving was still tough enough, but the pay was poor as a puncher’s and the driver was no hero any more. Winder took it personally.

Davies knew how he was, and let him cool. Then he said, without looking up, “Legal action’s not always just, that’s true.”

“You’re damn shootin’ it ain’t.”

“What would you say real justice was, Bill?”

Winder got cautious. “Whadya mean?” he asked.

“I mean, if you had to say what justice was, how would you put it?”

That wouldn’t have been easy for anyone. It made Winder wild. He couldn’t stand getting reined down logical.

“It sure as hell ain’t lettin’ things go till any sneakin’ cattle thief can shoot a man down and only get a laugh out of it. It ain’t that, anyway,” he defended.

“No, it certainly isn’t that,” Davies agreed.

“It’s seein’ that everybody gets what’s comin’ to him, that’s what it is,” Winder said.

Davies thought that over. “Yes,” he said, “that’s about it.”

“You’re damn shootin’ it is.”

“But according to whom?” Davies asked him.

“Whadya mean, ‘according to whom’?” Winder wanted to know, saying “whom” like it tasted bad.