The Ox-Bow Incident (6 page)

Canby had already thrown water in Gil’s face, and was taking his gun out of the holster.

“He’ll be all right,” I said. “He always comes out of it nice.”

Canby studied me for a moment, then nodded and let the gun slip back.

“How about him, though?” I asked, meaning Farnley.

Canby had hold of Gil’s head between his two long hands and was working it around loosely and massaging the back of his neck. Still working, he looked over his shoulder at Farnley, where Moore had him in another chair by the window. Farnley was still out, but he was coming. His face was already beginning to swell, and his mouth was bleeding some from the corner. I didn’t like the way he was coming back, slow, and without any chatter or struggle. Canby watched him too, until Farnley got back of his eyes again, and then, as if everything was all at once clear, sat up and shook off the hands working on him, and leaned forward, propping himself with his arms on his knees.

Gil was beginning to come up too. Canby turned back.

“Yeh,” he said to me. “That’s a different matter. Better pick up his dough,” he added.

I got the sack and scooped the winnings from the table into it. Osgood, who had been standing around trying to think of something useful, picked up the coins that had fallen onto the floor, even tracking down the one that had rolled off.

Gil started to talk before he was out of it, muttering and sort of joking and protesting. He rolled around some on the chair. When he really woke up he pushed us off, but gently, not wanting to jar himself. Then he took hold of his head with both hands and leaned way over.

“Holy cow,” he said, and worked his hands in and out from his head to show how it was feeling.

Everybody laughed but Farnley, who looked across slow, and didn’t seem to think anything was funny.

Gil got up, testing his legs, and turned his head carefully.

“I must have hit myself,” he said. They laughed again.

Farnley got up, and the laughing stopped. But he only walked to the bar and got himself a drink. He didn’t talk to anyone or look at anyone.

Gil closed his eyes, then his mouth, and got a queer, strangled look on his face. He put a hand up to his mouth and turned and hurried out through the back room. I followed him with his Indian sack in my hand. He was staggering some, and bumped against the outside kitchen door, but he got out quickly. I could hear the men laughing again behind us. They liked the way Gil took it; he made it all right for them to laugh, and he did look funny, that big, red-headed bear trotting out like a little kid holding his pants.

When I got to him he was standing in a little cleared, black space where Canby burned his rubbish, with his hands on his knees, leaning over some green tumbleweed that was still rooted in. He was pretty well emptied out already, and just getting hold of himself again.

He stood up with his eyes watering and his face red.

“Holy cow,” he gulped.

“It must have been Canby,” he said. “Now I’ve got to start all over again.”

“Take your time,” I advised. “You’ve got head enough.”

Gil stood there breathing in and looking around like he was really starting life again, though doubtfully. The clouds had risen higher in the west, and now and then one blew free across the valley, making a deeper, passing shadow on the shadow of the bending grass.

From somewhere down the side street we caught the sound of a running horse on the hard-pan. By the clatter, he was being pushed.

“Somebody’s in a hell of a hurry,” Gil said.

We got a glimpse of the rider as he rounded onto the main street. The horse banked around at a considerable angle, and was running hard and heavily. There was white dropping away from his bit. The rider had been bent over with his hat pulled down hard, but even in the little space we could see him, he straightened back and began to rein in strong. Then they were out of sight behind Canby’s.
There’d be trouble stopping that horse. He looked to me like he’d been run till he couldn’t quit.

“I’m not, though,” Gil said.

I liked it out there too. It was good after the stale darkness inside. A long roundup makes you restless inside houses for a while. Now and then in the freshening wind we could hear a meadow lark “chink-chink-a-link,” and then another, way off and higher, “tink-tink-a-link.” I could see how they’d be leaping up out of the grass, fluttering while they just let off for all the spring was worth to them, and then dropping back into the grass again.

Gil, though, was thinking about something.

“He didn’t use his fist, did he?”

“What?”

“Canby. He didn’t knock me out with his fist, did he?”

“No, a bottle.”

“That’s all right, then. I thought it must have been that.”

And after breathing in a couple of times more, “He shouldn’t have stopped me though. I don’t feel any better.”

“It takes a lot to please you,” I told him. “Anyway, lay off Farnley. You were pretty low on that.”

“Listen who’s giving the orders,” he said, but grinning.

“Yeh, I guess I was at that,” he said seriously. “Maybe I ought to give him back his money. Say, the money,” he said quickly.

“I’ve got it,” I told him, and gave him the sack. He weighed it in his hand and ran his tongue over his lower lip.

“You think I ought to give it back?” he asked unhappily.

“Not all of it,” I said. “Most of it was won fair. But not the last pot; that was no poker.”

That cheered him up. “Yeh, the last pot,” he agreed, “that was the one.”

He stared at the sack. “Maybe you’d better give it to him,” he said. “How much was it?”

“No, you give it to him,” I said. “That will fix it better.”

He looked at me, thinking about it.

“You don’t need to say anything, just that you were pretty drunk,” I advised.

That seemed to satisfy him.

“How much was it?” he asked again.

“Ten dollars is near enough,” I said.

“Is that all?” he said, feeling better.

He poured coins out into his hand, counted out ten dollars, dropped the rest back in, drew the sack tight, tied it around the neck and slipped it into his pocket. It still made a big bulge. With the ten dollars in his hand he started for the back door.

“Better kind of sidle up,” I said.

He stopped short and looked at me. “The hell I will,” he said. He was coming back all right. He had a wonderful strong head when his belly was clean. “Why should I?” he asked, as if he was willing to be reasonable if I didn’t expect too much.

“You hit him plenty hard,” I said, “and you made him look foolish.”

“Did I?” he asked. Then, “Did I get him?”

“You got him. I thought you’d busted his neck.”

Gil grinned. “Well, I’ll try and go easy,” he said.

We went in through the kitchen and the back room where Canby served meals and had a pool table now. But when we got to the bar door I could see right away something was wrong. Farnley was standing at the other end, by the front door, looking like he hadn’t come out of his daze yet, and Moore had hold of him by the arm and was talking to him. Davies was trying to say something too. Just when we stopped, Farnley shook Moore off, though still standing there.

“The lousy sons-of-bitches,” he said, and then repeated it slowly, each word by itself.

At first I was going to try to get Gil out the back way again. It wouldn’t be easy. When he heard Farnley he pulled the sack out of his jeans again and dropped the ten
dollars back into it. And it wasn’t his drunk fighting face that was coming on now, either.

Then I saw how the men were, all gathered together along the bar there, looking quiet and angry, and not paying any attention to us. When they heard our boots a few glanced at us, but didn’t even seem to see us. They’d been watching Farnley at first, and now they were looking at a new rider who was talking excitedly, so I couldn’t get what he said. He was a young fellow, still in his teens, I thought, and he was out of breath. He was feeling important, but wild too, talking fast and waving his right hand, and then slapping the gun on his thigh, which was tied down like a draw-fighter’s. His black sombrero was pushed onto the back of his head, and his open vest was flapping. There was a movement and mutter beginning among the men, but at the end the kid’s voice came up so we could hear what he was saying.

“Shot right through the head, I tell you,” he cried, like somebody was arguing with him, though nobody was.

Farnley reached out and grabbed the kid by the two sides of his vest in one hand, yanked him close and spoke right in his face. The kid looked scared and said something low. Farnley still held him for a moment, staring at him, then let him go, turned and pushed through to the front door and out onto the walk.

Some of the men followed him, but most of them milled around the kid, trying to get something more out of him, but not being noisy now either.

“Come on,” I told Gil, “it’s not us.”

“It better not be,” Gil said, starting slow to come with me.

“It’s the kid that was riding so fast,” I explained.

They were all beginning to crowd outside now. Only Smith was trying to push in past them, with his eye out for drinks they’d left on the bar. And they’d left a lot, seven or eight that weren’t empty. And Canby saw Smith and didn’t
say anything either, but went and stood in the door behind the others, looking out. Something was up.

“What’s up?” I asked Canby, trying to see past him. He didn’t turn his head.

“Lynching, I’d judge,” he said, like it didn’t interest him.

“Those rustlers?” I asked.

“Maybe,” he said, looking at me kind of funny. “They don’t know yet who. But somebody’s been in down on Drew’s range and killed Kinkaid, and they think there’s cattle gone too.”

“Killed Kinkaid?” I echoed, and thought that over quick. Kinkaid had been Farnley’s buddy. They’d been riding together from the Panhandle to Jackson Hole ever since they were kids. Kinkaid was a little, dark Irishman who liked to be by himself, and never offered to say anything, but only made short answers when he had to, and then you had to be close to hear him. He always seemed halfway sad, and though he had a fine, deep singing voice, he wouldn’t often sing when he knew anybody could hear. He was only an ordinary rider, with no flair to give him a reputation, but still there was something about him which made men cotton to him; nothing he did or said, but a gentle, permanent reality that was in him like his bones or his heart, that made him seem like an everlasting part of things. You didn’t notice when he was there, but you noticed it a lot when he wasn’t. You could no more believe that Kinkaid was dead than you could that a mountain had moved and left a gap in the sky. The men would go a long way, and all together, to get the guy that had killed Kinkaid. And I was remembering Canby’s joke about Gil and me.

“When?” Gil asked.

Then Canby looked at him too. “They don’t know,” he said; “about noon, maybe. They didn’t find him till a lot later.” And he looked at me again.

I wanted to feel the way the others did about this, but you can feel awful guilty about nothing when the men
you’re with don’t trust you. I knew Gil was feeling the same way when he started to say something, and Canby looked back at him, and he didn’t say it. But we couldn’t afford to stand in there behind Canby either. I pushed past him and went down onto the walk, Gil right behind me.

Farnley was climbing onto his horse. He moved slowly and deliberately, like a man with his mind made up. A rider yelled, as if Farnley was half a mile off, “Hey, Jeff. Wait up; we’ll form a posse.”

“I can get the sons-of-bitches,” Farnley said, and reined around.

Moore said, “He’s crazy,” and started out into the street. But Davies was ahead of him. He came alongside Farnley in a little, shuffling run, and took hold of his bridle. The horse, checked, wheeled his stern away from Davies and switched his tail. The way Farnley looked down, I thought he was going to let Davies have it in the face with his quirt. But he didn’t. Davies was an old man, short and narrow and so round-shouldered he was nearly a hunchback, and with very white, silky hair. His hollow, high-cheeked face, looking up at Farnley, was white from indoor work, and had deep forehead lines and two deep, clear lines each side of a wide, thin mouth. The veins made his hollow temples appear blue. He would have been a good figure for a miser except for his eyes, which were a queerly young, bright and
shining blue, and usually, though not now, humorous. Farnley looked at those eyes and held himself.

“There’s no rush, Jeff,” Davies said, coaxing him. “They have a long start of us, anyway.”

Farnley said something we couldn’t hear.

Davies said, “You don’t know how many of them there are, Jeff. There might be twenty. It won’t help Larry to get yourself killed too.”

Farnley didn’t say anything, but he didn’t pull his horse away. The horse yanked its head up twice, and Davies let go of the bridle, and put a hand on Farnley’s knee.

“We aren’t even certain which way they went, Jeff, or how long they’ve had. You just wait till we know what we’re doing. We’re all with you about Kinkaid. You know that, son.”

He kept his hand on Farnley’s knee, and stood there with his hat off and the sun shining in his white hair. The hair was long, down over his collar. Farnley must have begun to think a little. He waited. Moore went out to them.

Osgood was standing beside me on the walk. “They mustn’t do this; they mustn’t,” he said, waving his hands and looking as if he were going to cry. Then he thrust his hands back into his pockets again.

Gil was behind us. He said to Osgood, “Shut up, gran’ma. Nobody expects you to go.”

Osgood turned around quickly and nervously. “I’m not afraid,” he asserted. “Not in the least afraid. It is quite another consideration which prevents …”

“You can preach later,” Gil cut him off without looking at him, but watching Moore talk to Farnley. “There’ll be more of us needing it, maybe.”

“You ain’t even got a gun yet, Jeff,” Moore was repeating.

Osgood suddenly went out to the two men by the horse. He went busily, as if he didn’t want to, but was making himself. His bald head was pale in the sun. The wind fluttered
his coat and the legs of his trousers. He looked helpless and timid. I knew he was trying to do what he thought was right, but he had no heart in his effort. He made me feel ashamed, as disgusted as Gil.