The Ox-Bow Incident
By: Walter Van Tilburg Clark ; with an afterword by Walter Prescott Webb.
Publisher: Signet Classic
Published: 1968
Place of publication: [New York]
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 224
First sentence: Gil and I crossed the eastern divide about two by the sun. We pulled up for a look at the little town in the big valley and the mountains on the other side, with the crest of the Sierra showing faintly beyond like the rim of a day moon. We didn't look as long as we do sometimes; after winter range, we were excited about getting back to town. When the horses had stopped trembling from the last climb, Gil took off his sombrero, pushed his sweaty hair back with the same hand, and returned the sombrero, the way he did when something was going to happen. We reined to the right and went slowly down the steep stage road It was a switch-back road, gutted by the run-off of the winter storms and with brush beginning to grow up in it again since the stage had stopped running. In the pockets under the red earth banks, where the wind was cut off, the spring sun was hot as summer, and the air was full of a hot, melting pine smell. Rivulets of water trickled down shining on the sides of the cuts. The jays screeched in the trees
Description: This is a searing study of mob justice. The story takes place in the Old West, but it could happen anywhere, anytime that men of action let their anger goad them into taking the law into their own hands. Published in 1940, this powerful narrative was immediately hailed as a work of art. "The Ox-Bow Incident is a triumph of restraint and workmanship. . . . The tenseness that builds and eddies and comes back stronger is beautifully geared to the temper of each central character and the shifting emotions of the mob, as doubt, anger, stubbornness, physical cold, pity and revulsion hold them in turn," said Max Gissen in the New Republic. Ben Ray Redman described it in The Saturday Review as "A sinewy, masculine tale that progressively tightens its grip on the reader." And Clifton Fadiman summed up the verdict of all the critics when he called this modern classic "a masterpiece."
Notes: "A Signet classic."

Originally published: New York : Random House, c1940.