The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
The Ox-Bow Incident was written in 1940 and was Walter Clark’s first novel. The book tells the story of two cowboys, Art and Gil, who are drawn into a lynch mob that sets out to find the men suspected of stealing livestock and murdering a local cattle hand.
As the mob begins to coalesce, Davies, a local shopkeep, is moved to try and convince the men that bringing the rustlers in and having them tried in front of a jury of their peers is the only civilized way forward. But after countless drinks and challenges to their manhood, the group decides that a lynching will do just as well.
As they follow the suspects’ trail, Art falls into conversation with young Gerald, son of the mob’s leader, the former Confederate soldier, Tetley. Gerald sullenly pontificates on man’s cruelty and tendency toward pack behavior.
This was a tale of two books for me. The first two-thirds were enjoyable if a bit slow. The last third I could not put down. Once the posse happens upon the suspected rustlers, the book takes off and, for me, was from that point on absolutely riveting.
My engagement was no doubt fueled by the fact that I really had no idea how the end would play out. I held out hope that the suspects would be spared and brought to trial. I waited for Martin, the leader of the accused, to hatch some sort of plot to free him and his men. I hoped that Davies would convince enough of the posse to turn on Tetley and reverse course or that Art and Gil would be brave enough to intervene.
But it’s a credit to Clark that in order to drive home his theme - that violence lies dormant in all of us, manifests itself in myriad ways, and is just waiting to be exploited by our biological fear of being ostracized by our tribe - the men had to die. Any other ending would have dulled the blade and muddied the moral.
“Most men are more afraid of being thought cowards than of anything else, and a lot more afraid of being thought physical cowards than moral ones. There are a lot of loud arguments to cover moral cowardice, but even an animal will know if you’re scared.”
The Ox-Bow Incident could not be more relevant today, as we see our society riven by tribalism, groupthink, orthodoxy, and violence. We saw it as a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in 2021. We see it on the streets of Portland, Charlottesville, and Seattle. And we see it every day on the inexhaustible. scrolling feeds of our social media platforms as people engage in endless virtue signaling, canceling, call-outs, and conspiracy mongering.
This book should be part of high school curriculum both as an example of classic American Western literature, but also as a lesson in how a mob can turn normally law-abiding, responsible, good-hearted people into something wild and savage.