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

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