The Ox-Bow Incident

Walter Van Tilburg Clark, “The Ox-Bow Incident,” Kindle Book, C1940

My local library didn’t have this book, which surprised me as it is considered a Classic, so I had to buy it on my Kindle.  After reading the entirely fanciful Virginian, and enjoying it, I thought it would be advisable to read a historically accurate account of the vigilantism in Wyoming's Johnson County.  So I did, and sadly found this book not nearly as enjoyable to read as the other (go figure).

The Ox-Bow Incident is a 1940 western novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark in which two drifters are drawn into a lynch mob to find and hang three men presumed to be rustlers and the killers of a local man.  In 1943, the novel was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated movie of the same name, starring Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan.  I saw this movie way-back-then.

The Ox-Bow Incident takes place in 1885, the year before the Big Die-Off when half the cattle in the West die in a snowstorm (the year my Grandmother was born). In any event, many cattle are missing from the local ranchers and when news arrives that a local named Kinkaid has been murdered and a large number of cattle have been stolen from Drew, the largest cattle rancher in Bridger's Wells. The townspeople begin to form a posse. Local men send for Judge Tyler to try to defuse the situation but the rancher Tetley arrives and incites them to further action. As the posse sets out, the judge warns that the men must be brought back alive to stand trial.

The posse finds cattle bearing Drew's brand and three men sleeping on the ground around a campfire: an old, raving man named Alva Hardwick; and a Mexican named Juan Martinez, who claims to be unable to understand English and the young Donald Martin. When interrogated, they state they purchased the cattle and that Drew was to send the bill of sale at a later date. No one believes him, and the mob decides that the men are to hang.  And, so they hang; only five of the twenty-eight present are opposed to the hanging.

After the lynching, the riders head back toward town, where they meet Sheriff Risley, Drew, and, much to their surprise, the supposedly murdered Lawrence Kinkaid. Drew confirms that he'd sold the cattle to Martin, who was not a rustler. The infuriated judge declares he will have the entire mob up on charges for murder. However, after staring down each member of the lynch mob one at a time, Sheriff Risley declares that he will pretend he saw nobody and knows nothing. He forms a posse and they go out in search of the real rustlers.

After reading this book it makes one ponder just how a situation such as this should, in real life,  have been handled.  I mean: is it feasible to really charge 23 men with murder?  This was a sizeable amount of the local population at the time.  Yet, there were many such incidents in this area at the time.  Most were an attempt by the large ranchers to keep out the free-grazers using cattle-rustling as the mostly bogus justification.