The Ox-Bow Incident

by Walter van Tilburg Clark

  “Jeez, the poor kid,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, “the poor kid.”

  And then, “The hired man was afraid to tell Tetley. He saw Sparks and told him, and Sparks came for me.”

  “Did you have to see Tetley then?”

  “I didn’t want to. I didn’t trust myself. But I saw him.”

  I didn’t ask the question, but he answered it anyway.

  “It meant nothing to him; not a flicker. Just thanked me as if I’d delivered a package from the store.”

  The news was like a home punch to me too. I should have known if anybody should, after the way the kid had opened up to me. Also I could see why that might have put Davies off on this spree of blaming himself. It could have been prevented so easily; just somebody to stay with the kid. The sins of omission.

  They laughed again downstairs.

  Shut up, you brainless bastards, I thought. I guess I half said it, because Davies looked up at me.

  “That’s not your fault,” I said. “With Tetley what he is, it would have happened sooner or later anyway. There’s some things you can’t butt in on.”

  “But you didn’t think it would happen?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, I was wrong.”

  “I did,” he whispered. “I knew.”

  “You couldn’t. I should have. He talked to me all the way up. I knew then he wasn’t straight. But when he didn’t, when he let Smith go down and get him like that, I didn’t think he’d make another try. You couldn’t know.”

  He suddenly switched our talk again. He couldn’t sit still, tired as he was, but got up and went to the window.

  “I’m not making a very clear confession, am I?”

  “Listen, Mr. Davies,” I started, and stopped because the men were laughing again downstairs and the laugh stopped short. I was listening for Gil’s voice. But it must have been just a short laugh, the sort you get when the story has to go on. One voice was talking steadily, and though I couldn’t hear the words I could hear the way they were clipped off, and the smooth, level tone. Rose’s husband. Then he got his big, final laugh, and somebody else started.

  I don’t think Davies had even heard them. He thought I just couldn’t find anything to say, and turned to face me once more, and there was neither that hope or the blind self-torture showing in his face for the moment. There was more a balance, as though he had finally decided exactly what to say and was intent upon my reply. That look brought me back too, so I was only half listening for Gil.

  “You say you know what I was thinking all the time?” he asked.

  “I could feel it,” I said carefully. “We all could.”

  “Did you believe Martin was innocent?” he asked. “I mean at the time, before we knew. Did you believe he was innocent when they put the rope up over the limb?” he put it.

  I stayed careful. “I felt we were wrong,” I said slowly, looking right at him, “I felt that he shouldn’t hang.”

  “That’s scarcely the same thing,” he said. “Nobody wants to see a man hang.”

  “You couldn’t know he was innocent,” I said. “None of us would have stood there and seen him hang if we’d known.”

  “No,” Davies said. “So you didn’t know.” He was very quiet saying that.

  “You’re twisting it again,” I told him sharply.

  “No,” he said, “you didn’t know, but I did.”

  Then it struck me so it made the blood come to my own face. He’d known something all along, and been afraid to bring it out, because of Tetley. He’d had a proof, perhaps in that letter, and been afraid for his own skin to bring it out. I could see then why he wanted to believe nothing could have turned Tetley.

  “How could you know?” I tried to bluff, but my voice didn’t sound right and he caught it.

  “Yes,” he said. “I knew. I’d read that letter.”

  He got my question again.

  “No,” he said, “not that way. There was nothing a court would have called a proof. A court won’t take the picture of a man’s soul for a proof. But I knew then, beyond any question, what he was like. From the first I felt a boy like that couldn’t have done it; not the rustling even; certainly not the murder. And when I’d read that letter I knew it.”

  So I was wrong again.

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  “He talked about me in the letter,” Davies mooned. “He told his wife how kind I was to him, what I risked trying to defend him. And he trusted me; you saw that. He worked so hard to ease it for his wife, too,” he went on, lower. “To keep her from breaking herself on grief or hating us. And he reminded her of things they had done together.”

  He bent his head in a spasm again. “It was a beautiful letter,” he whispered.

  “Listen,” I said, “that may all make you feel bad, sure. It was a rotten deal, sure. But we all knew we should have brought them in like you said, and if we had, it never would have happened.”

  “Half an hour,” Davies mumbled. “Half an hour would have done it.”

  “I know,” I said. “You think I haven’t thought of that too? But there wasn’t anything you could do.”

  “I knew,” he repeated. His knowing seemed to be what hurt him most.

  “You didn’t know,” I told him, “any more than the rest of us did. You knew what he was like from that letter, you say. Well, maybe. But we all had a chance to see that letter. That kind of an argument can’t stand up against branded cattle, no bill of sale, a dead man’s gun, and a guy that acts like that Mex did.”

  “It could have,” he said. “You admit yourself you were ready to be stopped. You admit you thought most of them were.”

  “There wasn’t the proof,” I said angrily. “You don’t get all set for a hanging and stop for some little feeling you have.”

  “You might,” he said, “when you’re hanging on a feeling too.”

  “You tried to stop it, hard enough and often enough,” I said.

  “That’s the point,” he said. This calm and reasonable self-denunciation was worse than when he broke a little. “I tried. I took the leadership, and with it I accepted the responsibility. I set myself up as the power of justice, of common pity, even. I set myself up as the light to oppose Tetley’s darkness. And in their hearts the men were with me; and the right was with me. Everything was with me.”

  “Everything,” I reminded him, “except what we all took to be the facts.”

  “They didn’t matter then,” he maintained. “They didn’t matter.”

  “God,” I said, “if you take any pleasure in feeling responsible for three gang hangings and a suicide.”

  He closed his eyes like I’d slapped him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “No, you’re right,” he said. “I was.”

  “You get some sleep,” I ordered. He’d skirted the point again, if he had one. He was just cutting himself up.

  “You’ll admit I took it on myself to stand up against Tetley,” he persisted.

  “All right, you did. There were none of us there hog-tied, or tongue-tied either, for that matter.”

  He looked at me. I was going to say something more, but suddenly the chatter downstairs stopped, and there was one voice, a new one, had it all; and it was loud and thick and angry. It wasn’t till then that I realized how much I was worried about Gil. I had my hand out to take my gun belt off the foot of the bed before I knew it wasn’t Gil talking, but Smith. Drunk, too, by the sound. He had it to himself for a minute. Then I heard the deep, even rumble that was Canby. Then Smith, louder than before, even, and Canby pretty short, and it was quiet. Finally a subdued general talk started again.

  I went over to the table by the east window and poured myself a glass of water. My hand was trembling so I slopped water on the floor. The shoulder burned, and I was dizzy. I drank the water off, and felt better, though it was cold and trickling in my empty gut. I was angry at shaking up so easy. I wished Davies would get done. His conscience was getting t
oo big for me. I was used to confessions, but I was lost in this one.

  When I turned around Davies was at the window, staring out again. I crossed and sat down on the bed again, to get the dizziness over. He came and stood by the foot of the bed.

  “I won’t bother you much longer, Art,” he said.

  “You’re not bothering me.”

  “A man ought to keep things to himself,” he said. “Even guilt, unless there’s something can be done about it. Confession’s no good except for the one confessing. Only I want to be sure,” he finished.

  “Sure of what?”

  “Art, you say you know what I was thinking—” He stopped.

  There it was again; that question. And I knew I didn’t have the answer this time either. I just sat and waited and didn’t look at him.

  “Art, just when they were going to hang them, when the ropes were up, what was it I was thinking?”

  “How would I know? A man thinks about funny things at a time like that. Every man’s would be different. Maybe a song you heard once. I don’t know.”

  “What would you think?” he insisted.

  “Like all of us, I suppose. That you wished it didn’t have to be done; at least not there in front of you. Or that it was all over, and the poor bastards were dead and happy.”

  “You didn’t think it could be stopped?” he asked.

  “It was too late for that.”

  “You didn’t think of using your gun?”

  That surprised me. “On what?” I asked.

  “Tetley,” he said.

  “You mean …”

  “No, just to force him to take them back for trial.”

  “No,” I said finally, “I don’t think I did. It was all settled. I had a kind of wild idea for a moment, but I didn’t really think of it. You get those wild ideas, you know, out of nothing, when you have to do something you don’t much like. I didn’t really think of it, no,” I said again.

  “Did you have a feeling it would have worked? That you could have turned the whole thing right then? Or that somebody could have?”

  I thought. “No,” I said, “I guess not. I guess I just thought it was settled. I didn’t like it, but it was settled.”

  “It should have been stopped,” he said, “even with a gun.”

  “I can see that now.”

  “I could see it then,” he said.

  “You didn’t even have a gun.”

  “No,” he said, “no, I didn’t,” as if admitting the ultimate condemnation of himself.

  After a moment I admitted, “I guess you’re not twisting it; I guess I am. I don’t see what you’ve got to feel bad about.”

  “I thought of all that,” he said. “Do you see? I knew Tetley could be stopped then. I knew you could all be turned by one man who would face Tetley with a gun. Maybe he wouldn’t even have needed a gun, but I told myself he would. I told myself he would to face Tetley, because Tetley couldn’t bear to be put down, and because Tetley was mad to see those three men hang, and to see Gerald made to hang one of them. I told myself you’d have to stop him with fear, like any animal from a kill.”

  “You were right,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking much then; but you were right.”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I was right or not. Do you know what I felt when I thought that, Croft?”

  I thought he was going to answer his own question, and let it go. But he didn’t.

  “Can’t you guess, Croft?” he begged.

  “No,” I said slowly, “I can’t. What?”

  “I was glad, Croft, glad I didn’t have a gun.”

  I didn’t look up. I felt something rotten in what he was saying, or maybe just that he was saying it. It was obscure, but I didn’t want to look at him.

  “Now do you see,” he said triumphantly, like all he had wanted to do was make himself out the worst he could. “I knew those men were innocent. I knew it as surely as I do now. And I knew Tetley could be stopped. I knew in that moment you were all ready to be turned. And I was glad I didn’t have a gun.”

  He was silent, except that I could hear him breathing hard over what he seemed to consider an unmerciful triumph, breathing as if he had overcome something tremendous, and could begin to rest now. I could hear the talking downstairs again too. There wasn’t much laughing now, though. For some reason I was relieved that there wasn’t much laughing, as if, coming at that moment, even from downstairs, it would have been too much.

  But he had to rub it in.

  “Yes, you see now, don’t you?” he said in a low voice. “I had everything, justice, pity, even the backing—and I knew it—and I let those three men hang because I was afraid. The lowest kind of a virtue, the quality dogs have when they need it, the only thing Tetley had, guts, plain guts, and I didn’t have it.”

  “You take it too hard,” I said, still looking at the floor. “You take it too much on yourself. There was no reason …”

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” he said hoarsely. “I know what you think. And you’re right. Oh, don’t you worry,” he said, before I could call him, “I’ve thought of all the excuses. I told myself I was the emissary of peace and truth, and that I must go as such; that I couldn’t even wear the symbol of violence. I was righteous and heroic and calm and reasonable.”

  He paused, and I could feel the bed shaking under his hands.

  “All a great, cowardly lie,” he said violently. “All pose; empty, gutless pretense. All the time the truth was I didn’t take a gun because I didn’t want it to come to a showdown. The weakness that was in me all the time set up my sniveling little defense. I didn’t even expect to save those men. The most I hoped was that something would do it for me.

  “Something,” he said bitterly.

  Then I thought he was done, but he wasn’t. Getting over the hump, the big fact of what he saw as his cowardice, had just unplugged him. He let it all come. He was so tired he was like a blind man in a strange room, always bumping into something, the chair, the wash stand, the foot of the bed, but he couldn’t stay anywhere long. Only now and then he’d sit down, or stand briefly in front of one of the windows, looking out, or by the bed, looking at me. It got so I knew from where he was and the tone of his voice when he started, what he was going to talk about. When he was stumbling around, his voice would be hoarse and his words tumultuous, and then it was always self-condemnation or a blast against Tetley, but with the blasts always ending in blaming himself too, more quietly, as if each time he saw anew the injustice of accusing Tetley. When he was sitting in the chair he would be still for a long time, and then begin, in a low, breaking voice, to remember something about Martin, or Martin’s wife and children as he saw them from that letter. The letter was an obsession itself. When he came to stand over me, it was to offer another clear proof, as he saw it now, that the flaw had been in him from the start, that he had never really hoped to save those men or force justice.

  Once, when he had subsided into the chair and was silent longer than usual, I could hear that Rose and her husband weren’t down in the bar any longer, and after that I listened better.

  Even so it was hard talk to hear because there wasn’t any answer. It was disordered and fragmentary, but if you admitted the big point, his own guilt, it wasn’t illogical, and it was impossible to make him see that nobody else could think him guilty. I tried just once to make him see that, and he turned and stared at me till I was done, which didn’t take long, and then laughed hard and suddenly, and stopped laughing suddenly and said, oh, yes, he was trying to play the Christ all right, but it wasn’t a part for cowards, and it hadn’t needed a Christ anyway; all it had needed was a man. And after that he would end each tirade against himself with another sudden laugh about trying to play the Christ. I had to let him go; if anything would help, that would. We couldn’t bridge the gap; he was all inside, I was all outside.

  Finally, though, he was played out. He’d talked more than an hour; I wasn’t sure, maybe two. From where I was sitting on
the bed I could see through the window that it was late-afternoon sun on the eastern hills, and that the snow was almost gone from them already. It was a sad light, but lovely and peaceful, glowing as if it burned within the hills themselves. Then Davies just sat there with his head in his hands, now and then bending it so his fingers ran through his hair, but then lifting his head again, as if each time he decided he wouldn’t break, but stand it.

  “You better get that sleep now,” I said, as quiet as I could.

  He looked at me slowly, bringing his mind back. He appeared nearly dead, the hollows of his face so sunken that his skull showed in startling relief. But his eyes were a lot calmer, and though he was shivering, it wasn’t with that tightness any longer, but just as if he were exhausted and cold.

  “I might as well, hadn’t I?” he said. He got up slowly and came to stand by the foot of the bed again.

  “I’m sorry, Art,” he said.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “You had to. You can rest now.”

  He nodded.

  I must have forgotten the voices downstairs, which had grown quieter as it got toward supper time, for I didn’t even realize that Gil’s was one of them now, until I heard somebody running on the boardwalk under the arcade, and coming in below us, slamming the door so the talk stopped. I stood up quickly, still listening, but there was just the one voice, young and excited, some boy, and then exclamations without anger, and a low murmur. I withdrew my hand from the gun belt again. I’d have to get Gil in sight to feel easy.

  Davies said, as though it didn’t matter now, “I’ve even thought—” and paused so long I said, “What?”

  “I’ve even thought,” he said, “that I wouldn’t have needed a gun, that at the very end Tetley knew he was wrong too, and all I’d have had to do was say so.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, “you were right in the first place. He was frozen onto that hanging. You’d have had to hit him over the head to bring him out of it.”

  “I hold to that,” he said, like he was really hanging on hard to something. “I hold to that.”