The Oxbow Incident

The incident occurred in a valley that resembled the shape of an ox-bow. Just as the ox-bow lay around an animal’s throat, so does the noose around the necks of three innocent men. The message clearly lies in the letter of a dead man, “Man just can’t mutually take the law into his own hands, and hang people without hurting everybody in the world. Cause then he’s not just breaking one law, but all laws. Law’s a lot more that a word you put in a book or judges, lawyers, and sheriffs you hire to carry them out. It’s everything people ever found out about justice and what’s right and wrong. It’s the very conscience of humanity. There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except in their conscience. And what is anybody’s conscience except a little piece of every man’s conscience that ever lived…

Review

Two men (Art and Gil) find themselves in Bridger Wells, a smal...