Bingo: “O”
The true law is something in itself; it is the spirit of the moral nature of man; it is an existence apart, like God, and as worthy of worship as God. If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?”
Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Ox Bow incident is an observation on justice, mob psychology, morality, and personal responsibility. It’s a relatively short book with a tight focus. A man is killed and cattle is stolen by rustlers in a small western town. The town’s men come together to track down the rustlers, vowing to lynch them. A couple of the men, an elder and a young man who is the son of the rancher leading the mob, have deep moral objections and want to see the rustlers brought to justice in a court of law.
The narrator, Art Croft, is a cowboy who has come to town with his fellow rider Gil. They stop in the local bar, where they drink and play cards. Later a young man comes tearing in and reports to the patrons that a rider has been shot and killed and 40 head of cattle have been stolen. It doesn’t take long for the town’s men to decide to track down the thieves and bring them to justice through an extrajudicial killing.
The majority of the book involves the men gathering and the efforts of an older man named Davies to dissuade the mob from the lynching. At one point he asks one of the men, ““I mean, if you had to say what justice was, how would you put it?” The man replies, “It’s seein’ that everybody gets what’s comin’ to him, that’s what it is.” The conversation goes on:
“But how do we decide?” Davies asked, as if it were troubling him.
“Decide what?”
“Who’s got what coming to him?”
Davies goes on:
If we go out and hang two or three men,” he finished, “without doing what the law says, forming a posse and bringing the men in for trial, then by the same law, we’re not officers of justice, but due to be hanged ourselves.”
The book drags a bit in places—there’s a lot of standing around, talking and waiting—but it was a pretty riveting scenario. Croft is the observer even though he’s also part of the mob. Davies and another man named Gerald are the ethical heart of the book. The book’s drama significantly rises once the men find the rustlers and the ending has some twists and heartfelt revelations.
I liked this book and it’s a good examination of mob rule and the meaning of justice.
Note: There is some really racist language that may be historically accurate for the 1800s but still unpleasant.