Free The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark Page A

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 slowlyaround 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.