Hickock and Smith’s failed attack on Bell in his car

Hickock and Perry Smith’s failed attack on Bell in his car brings a concealed plan into the open at the moment it is about to be carried out. Mr. Bell, tired and eager for company on the drive toward Omaha, sees two apparently unthreatening hitchhikers. He does not know that they intend to rob and kill him. The scene turns on the narrow gap between his ordinary act of offering a ride and the violence the two men have prepared—and on an unexpected stop that breaks their sequence of actions before it can be completed.

The Ride and the Intended Victim

The encounter begins late in the afternoon, about a hundred miles from Mr. Bell’s destination in Omaha, where the meat-packing company he works for is headquartered. Company rules forbid its salesmen from picking up hitchhikers, but Bell often disregards the rule when boredom or drowsiness makes the drive difficult. He wants a short nap, yet stops when he sees two young men beside the road. His choice is presented as habitual and practical: he welcomes company to help keep him awake for the remaining journey.

The men seem acceptable passengers to him. Dick, the taller one, is wiry, with dirty-blond crew-cut hair, an engaging grin, and a polite manner. Perry Smith, seated behind the driver, is shorter and carries a harmonica and a swollen straw suitcase. Bell takes their appearance and manner as signs that they are harmless. Dick introduces himself and Perry, and Bell offers to drive them as far as Omaha. The disparity between what Bell believes he has agreed to and what his passengers intend gives the ride its danger: he treats the meeting as a routine exchange between strangers, while the pair regard it as an opportunity to select a victim.

A Plan Prepared in Advance

The attempted attack is not a sudden quarrel. Dick and Perry have been looking for a suitable target during three days of hitchhiking from California through Nevada and Wyoming into Nebraska. Their earlier rides came from truck drivers and soldiers, as well as two prizefighters in a lavender Cadillac, but none had offered the same opportunity. Bell appears to them to be a prosperous man traveling alone, and the fact that he has stopped voluntarily makes him, in their calculation, an ideal target.

The plan depends on coordination. Dick is to give a prearranged signal by asking Perry for a match; Dick will then take control of the steering wheel while Perry attacks the driver with a rock wrapped in a yellow cotton handkerchief. They also intend to use Perry’s Navajo belt, with its silver buckle and turquoise beads, in the killing and to leave Bell’s body in a grave on the prairie. These preparations make the episode more than an opportunistic robbery: the pair have assigned roles, selected instruments, and imagined how to dispose of the victim. Their apparent sociability in the car conceals an action sequence already agreed upon.

Waiting Inside the Car

While Dick talks about his work as a car painter and mechanic and describes the pair’s stay in Mexico, Perry recognizes the performance as a way of impressing a man they expect to kill. Dick’s conversation continues as Bell responds with an account of his own honeymoon in Cuernavaca and mentions his five children. Perry registers that detail but remains focused on the plan. The exchange gives Bell room to speak about his life while the men withhold the purpose of the ride from him.

Perry keeps the rock in the pocket of his leather windbreaker, removes the belt, and waits for Dick’s signal. He plays with his harmonica as the prairie passes. The delay becomes physically difficult for him: his head hurts and his knees ache, and he takes three Bayer aspirin dry. Dick and Bell trade dirty jokes, and their laughter irritates Perry; Bell’s hearty laughter recalls the laughter of Perry’s father, Tex John Smith. These details connect the intended attack to Perry’s strained state in the car without changing the practical terms of the plan. He is waiting for Dick to begin, while watching the road and the diminishing light for an opportunity to act.

The Interruption

The road appears to offer the conditions the pair have been waiting for: it is straight, the light is fading, and no houses or other people are in view. Perry senses that Dick has also concluded the time has come. Yet Dick continues joking before at last giving the agreed signal. Perry raises his hand, with the rock poised to be used, and the attack is on the verge of beginning.

At that instant, a third hitchhiker—a Black soldier—appears, and Bell stops the car for him. The stop interrupts the planned sequence before Perry strikes or Dick takes control of the wheel. Bell’s willingness to offer another ride, the same impulse that had exposed him to danger, unexpectedly prevents the attack from proceeding in the planned way. The episode ends with the intended victim still in the car and the pair’s preparations thwarted by the arrival of someone they had not anticipated.

Narrative Significance

The failed attack is built around a reversal in the meaning of hospitality. Bell’s repeated willingness to pick up strangers is ordinary behavior to him, and his offer of a ride initially seems to confirm that the men have found precisely the isolated target they wanted. When he stops again, the same habit alters the situation: the arrival of another passenger disrupts the private, controlled setting Dick and Perry require. The interruption is contingent rather than the result of Bell discovering their intentions.

The scene also sets the appearance of the two passengers against the evidence of their preparation. Their polite introductions, easy conversation, and shared jokes coexist with a deliberate plan involving a signal, assigned roles, a rock, and a belt. The narrative gives the reader access to the danger Bell cannot see, then withholds the expected outcome at the threshold of action. Because the attack is interrupted just as it is about to begin, the episode reveals both the seriousness of the pair’s intent and the fragility of their control over events.