The Ox-Bow Incident (24 page)

“You haven’t got any proof. Just because Baker robbed me, doesn’t make me a murderer. You can’t hang me without any proof.”

“We’re getting it,” Tetley said.

“Is it so far to Pike’s that you can’t go over there and look?” Martin cried. “Maybe I don’t even own the Baker place; maybe I’ve been sold out. But I’m living there now. My wife’s there now; my wife and two kids.”

“Now that’s really too bad,” Smith said, clucking his tongue in a sound of old-maid sympathy. “That’s just too, too bad.”

The kid didn’t look at him, but his jaw tightened and his
eyes were hot. “This is murder, as you’re going at it,” he told Tetley. “Even in this God-forsaken country I’ve got a right to be brought to trial, and you know it. I have, and these men have. We have a right to trial before a regular judge.”

“You’re getting the trial,” Tetley said, “with twenty-eight of the only kind of judges a murderer and a rustler gets in what you call this God-forsaken country.”

“And so far,” Winder put in, “the jury don’t much like your story.”

The kid looked around slowly at as many of us as he could see, the way he was tied. It was as if he hadn’t noticed before that we were there, and wanted to see what we were like. He must have judged Winder was right.

“I won’t talk further without a proper hearing,” he said slowly.

“Suit yourself, son,” Ma said. “This is all the hearing you’re likely to get short of the last judgment.”

“Have you any cattle up here with you?” Tetley asked him.

The kid looked around at us again. He was breathing hard. One of the men from Bartlett’s gang couldn’t help grinning a little. The kid started to say something, then shut his mouth hard. We all waited, Tetley holding up a hand when the man who had grinned started to speak. Then he asked the question again in the same quiet way.

The kid looked down at the ground finally, but remained silent.

“I’m not going to ask you again,” Tetley said. Smith stepped out with a rope in his hands. He was making a hangman’s noose, with half a dozen turns to it. The place was so quiet the tiny crackling of the burned-down wood sounded loud. Martin looked at the rope, sucked in his breath, and looked down again.

After a moment he said, so low we could hardly hear him, “Yes, I have.”

“How many?”

“Fifty head.”

“You miscounted, Amigo,” Tetley remarked. Amigo grinned and spread his hands, palms up, and shrugged his shoulders.

“Where did you get them, Mr. Martin?”

“From Harley Drew, in Bridger’s Valley.”

When he looked up, there were tears in his eyes. Most of the watchers looked down at their boots for a moment, some of them making wry faces.

“I’m no rustler, though. I didn’t steal them, I bought them and paid for them.” Then suddenly he wanted to talk a lot. “I bought them this morning; paid cash for them. My own were so bad I didn’t dare try to risk bringing them up. I didn’t know what the Mono Lake country was like. I sold them off in Salinas. I had to stock up again.”

He could see nobody believed him.

“You can wait, can’t you?” he pleaded. “I’m not likely to escape from an army like this, am I? You can wait till you see Drew, till you ask about me in Pike’s. It’s not too much to ask a wait like that, is it, before you hang men?”

Everybody was still just looking at him or at the ground.

“My God,” he yelled out suddenly, “you aren’t going to hang innocent men without a shred of proof, are you?”

Tetley shook his head very slightly.

“Then why don’t you take us in, and stop this damned farce?”

“It would be a waste of time,” Farnley said. “The law is almightly slow and careless around here.”

The kid appeared to be trying to think fast now.

“Where do you come from?” he asked.

“Bridger’s Valley,” Farnley told him. There were grins again.

Martin said to Tetley, “You know Drew then?”

“I know him,” Tetley said. You wouldn’t have gathered it was a pleasure from the way he spoke.

“Well, didn’t you even see him? Who sent you up here?”

“Drew,” Tetley said.

“That’s not true,” Davies said. He came out from the ring and closer to the fire. He looked odd among the riders, little and hunched in an old, loose jacket and bareheaded.

“Don’t let him get started again,” Smith said in a disgusted voice. “It’s one o’clock now.”

Davies didn’t pay any attention to him. “That statement is not true,” he repeated. “Drew didn’t send us up here. Drew didn’t even know we were coming.”

Tetley was watching him closely. There was only a remnant of his smile.

“As I’ve told you a hundred times,” Davies told us all, “I’m not trying to obstruct justice. But I do want to see real justice. This is a farce; this is, as Mr. Martin has said, murder if you carry it through. He’s perfectly within his rights when he demands trial. And that’s all I’ve asked since we started, that’s all I’m asking now, a trial.” He sounded truculent, for him, and was breathing heavily as he spoke. “This young man,” he said, pointing to Martin and looking around at us, “has said repeatedly that he is innocent. I, for one, believe him.”

“Then I guess you’re the only one that does, Arthur,” Ma told him quietly.

Tetley made a sign to Mapes with his hand. Mapes stepped out and took Davies by the arm and began to shove him back toward the ring of watchers. Davies did not struggle much; even the little he did looked silly in Mapes’ big hands. But while he went he called out angrily, “If there’s any justice in your proceedings, Tetley, it would be only with the greatest certainty, it would be only after a confession. And they haven’t confessed, Tetley. They say they’re innocent, and you haven’t proved they aren’t.”

“Keep him there,” Mapes told the men around Davies after he’d been pushed back.

“Indirectly, Drew,” Tetley said, as if Davies had not spoken.

“Now, if you’re done,” he went on, “I’d like to ask another question or two.” Martin seemed to have taken some
hope from Davies’ outburst. Now he was looking down again. It was clear enough what most of the men thought.

“First, perhaps you have a bill of sale for those cattle?”

Martin swallowed hard. “No,” he said finally. “No, I haven’t.”

“No?”

“Drew said it was all right. I couldn’t find him at the ranch house. He was out on the range when I found him. He didn’t have a bill of sale with him. He just said it was all right, not to wait, that he’d mail it to me. He told me it would be all right.”

“Moore,” Tetley said, without looking away from Martin.

“Yes?” Moore said. He didn’t want to talk.

“You ride for Drew, don’t you?”

“You know I do.”

“In fact you’re his foreman, aren’t you?”

“Yes, what of it?”

“How long have you been riding for Drew?”

“Six years,” Moore said.

“Did you ever know Drew to sell any cattle without a bill of sale?”

“No, I can’t say as I ever did. But I can’t remember every head he’s sold in six years.”

“It’s customary for Drew to give a bill of sale, though?”

“Yes.”

“And Moore, did you ever know Drew to sell any cattle after spring roundup, this year, or any other year?”

“No,” Moore admitted, “I don’t know that he’s ever done that.”

“Was there any reason why he should make a change in his regular practice this spring?”

Moore shook his head slowly. Young Greene shouted from over in front of Davies, “I heard him myself, say, just a couple of days ago, that he wouldn’t sell a head to God himself this spring.”

“Well?” Tetley asked Martin.

“I know it looks bad,” the kid said, in a slow tired voice. He didn’t expect to be believed any more. “I can’t tell you anything else, I guess, except to ask Drew. It was hard to get them from him, all right. We talked a long time, and I had to show him how I was stuck, and how nobody wanted to sell this spring because there were so few calves. He really let me have them just as a favor, I think. That’s all I have to tell you; I can’t say anything else, I guess, not that would make any difference to you.”

“No,” Tetley agreed, “I don’t believe you can.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Would you, in my place?”

“I’d ask,” Martin said more boldly. “I’d do a lot of asking before I’d risk hanging three men who might be innocent.”

“If it were only rustling,” Tetley said, “maybe. With murder, no. I’d rather risk a lot of hanging before too much asking. Law, as the books have it, is slow and full of holes.”

In the silence the fire crackled, and hissed when the snow fell into it. The light of it flagged up and down on the men’s serious faces, and Ma turned to observe Tetley. The mouths were hard and the eyes bright and nervous. Finally Ma said mildly, “I guess it would be enough, even for Tyler, wouldn’t it, Willard?”

“For Martin, perhaps,” Tetley said.

“The others are his men, ain’t they?” Farnley inquired.

Others quietly said it had been enough for them. Even Moore said, “It’s no kindness to keep them waiting.”

Still Tetley didn’t say anything, and Ma burst out, “What you tryin’ to do, play cat and mouse with them, Tetley? You act like you liked it.”

“I would prefer a confession,” Tetley said. He was talking to Martin, not to us.

Martin swallowed and wet his lips with his tongue, but couldn’t speak. Besides Smith, Farnley and Winder were knotting ropes now. Finally Martin groaned something we couldn’t understand, and abandoned his struggle with
himself. The sweat broke out on his face and began to trickle down; his jaw was shaking. The old man was talking to himself, now and then shaking his head, as if pursuing an earnest and weighty debate. The Mex was standing firmly, with his feet a little apart, like a boxer anticipating his opponent’s lunge or jab, saying nothing and showing nothing. It got to Gil even.

“I don’t see your game, Tetley,” he said. “If you got any doubts let’s call off this party and take them in to the Judge, like Davies wants.”

This was the first remark that had made any impression on Tetley’s cool disregard. He looked directly at Gil and told him, “This is only very slightly any of your business, my friend. Remember that.”

Gil got hot. “Hanging is any man’s business that’s around, I’d say.”

“Have you a brief for the innocence of these men?” Tetley asked him. “Or is it merely that your stomach for justice is cooling?”

“Mister, take it easy with that talk,” Gil said, swinging out of line and hitching a thumb over his gun belt. A couple of men tried to catch hold of him, but he shook them off short and sharp, without looking at them or using a hand. He was staring at Tetley in a way I knew enough to be scared of. I got up, but I didn’t know what I’d do.

“No man,” Gil said, standing just across the corner of the fire from Tetley, “no man is going to call me yellow. If that’s what you mean, make it plainer.”

Tetley was smooth. “Not at all,” he said. “But we seem to have a number of men here only too willing to foist the burden of a none too pleasant task onto others, even when those others, as we all know, may well never perform it. I was just wondering how many such men. It would be a kindness, in my estimation, to let them leave before we proceed further. Their interruptions are becoming tiresome.”

Gil stood where he was. “Well, I’m not one of them, get that,” he said.

“Good,” Tetley said, nodding as if he were pleased. “We have no quarrel then, I guess.”

“No,” Gil admitted, “but I still say I don’t see your game. Hanging is one thing. To keep men standing and sweating for it while you talk is another. I don’t like it.”

Tetley examined him as if to remember him for another time. “Hurry is scarcely to be recommended at a time like this,” he said finally. “I am taking, it seems to me, the chief responsibility in this matter, and I do not propose to act prematurely, that’s all.”

I could see Gil didn’t believe this any more than I did, but there wasn’t anything to say to it, no clear reason that you could put a finger on, for doubt. Gil stood there, but said nothing more. It was a hard spot for him to retreat from. Martin was watching him, hoping to God something would break. He sagged again, though, and closed his eyes and worked his mouth, when Gil just stood balanced and Tetley said, “Since they will not ease our task directly, we’ll get on.”

“We’ve had enough questions,” Winder said. “They aren’t talking.”

Tetley said to Martin, “You called the old man Dad. Is he your father?”

“No,” Martin said, and again added something too low to hear.

“Speak up, man,” Tetley said sharply, “you’re taking it like a woman.”

“Everybody’s gotta die once, son. Keep your chin up,” Ma said. That was bare comfort for him, but I knew Ma wasn’t thinking of him so much as of us. His weakness was making us feel as if we were mistreating a dog instead of trying a man.

The kid brought his head up and faced us, but that was worse. The tears were running down his cheeks and his mouth was working harder than ever.

“God Almighty, he’s bawlin’,” said Winder, and spit as if it made him sick.

“No,” said Martin, thick and blubbery, but loudly, “he works for me.”

“What’s your name?” Tetley asked, turning to the old man. The old man didn’t hear him; he continued to talk to himself. Mapes went and stood in front of him and said loudly in his face. “What’s your name?”

“I didn’t do it,” argued the old man. “No, how could I have done it? You can see I didn’t do it, can’t you?” He paused, thinking how to make it clear. “I didn’t have anything in my gun,” he explained. “Mr. Martin won’t let me have any bullets for my gun, so how could I do it? I wasn’t afraid to, but I didn’t have any bullets.”

“You didn’t do what?” Tetley asked him gently.

“No, I didn’t, I tell you. I didn’t.” Then his wet wreck of a face seemed to light up with an idea. “He done it,” he asserted. “He done it.”

“Who did it?” said Tetley, still quietly, but slowly and distinctly.

“He did,” burbled the old man, “Juan did. He told me so. No, he didn’t; I saw him do it. If I saw him do it,” he inquired cutely, “I know, don’t I? I couldn’t have done it if I saw him do it, could I?”

The Mex didn’t stir. Farnley was watching the Mex, and even his hard grin was gone. He was holding his breath, and then breathing by snorts.