All The Pretty Horses

I

THE CANDLEFLAME and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboards creaked under his boots. In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their waisted cutglass vase. Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting. He looked down at the guttered candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.

It was dark outside and cold and no wind. In the distance a calf bawled. He stood with his hat in his hand. You never combed your hair that way in your life, he said.

Inside the house there was no sound save the ticking of the mantel clock in the front room. He went out and shut the door.

Dark and cold and no wind and a thin gray reef beginning along the eastern rim of the world. He walked out on the prairie and stood holding his hat like some supplicant to the darkness over them all and he stood there for a long time.

As he turned to go he heard the train. He stopped and waited for it. He could feel it under his feet. It came boring out of the east like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite brakes and creating out of the night the endless fenceline down the dead straight right of way and sucking it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came lagging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing groundshudder watching it till it was gone. Then he turned and went back to the house.

She looked up from the stove when he came in and looked him up and down in his suit. Buenos dfas, guapo, she said.

He hung the hat on a peg by the door among slickers and blanketcoats and odd pieces of tack and came to the stove and got his coffee and took it to the table. She opened the oven and drew out a pan of sweetrolls she'd made and put one on a plate and brought it over and set it in front of him together with a knife for the butter and she touched the back of his head with her hand before she returned to the stove.

I appreciate you lightin the candle, he said.

Cómo?

La candela. La vela.

No fui yo, she said.

La señora?

Claro.

Ya se levantó?

Antes que yo.

He drank the coffee. It was just grainy light outside and Arturo was coming up toward the house.

HE SAW his father at the funeral. Standing by himself across the little gravel path near the fence. Once he went out to the street to his car. Then he came back. A norther had blown in about midmorning and there were spits of snow in the air with blowing dust and the women sat holding on to their hats. They'd put an awning up over the gravesite but the weather was all sideways and it did no good. The canvas rattled and flapped and the preacher's words were lost in the wind. When it was over and the mourners rose to go the canvas chairs they'd been sitting on raced away tumbling among the tombstones.

In the evening he saddled his horse and rode out west from the house. The wind was much abated and it was very cold and the sun sat blood red and elliptic under the reefs of bloodred cloud before him. He rode where he would always choose to ride, out where the western fork of the old Comanche road coming down out of the Kiowa country to the north passed through the westernmost section of the ranch and you could see the faint trace of it bearing south over the low prairie that lay between the north and middle forks of the Concho River. At the hour he'd always choose when the shadows were long and the ancient road was shaped before him in the rose and canted light like a dream of the past where the painted ponies and the riders of that lost nation came down out of the north with their faces chalked and their long hair plaited and each armed for war which was their life and the women and children and women with children at their breasts all of them pledged in blood and redeemable in blood only. When the wind was in the north you could hear them, the horses and the breath of the horses and the horses' hooves that were shod in rawhide and the rattle of lances and the constant drag of the travois poles in the sand like the passing of some enormous serpent and the young boys naked on wild horses jaunty as circus riders and hazing wild horses before them and the dogs trotting with their tongues aloll and footslaves following half naked and sorely burdened and above all the low chant of their traveling song which the riders sang as they rode, nation and ghost of nation passing in a soft chorale across that mineral waste to darkness bearing lost to all history and all remembrance like a grail the sum of their secular and transitorv and violent lives.

He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west. He turned south along the old war trail and he rode out to the crest of a low rise and dismounted and dropped the reins and walked out and stood like a man come to the end of something.

There was an old horseskull in the brush and he squatted and picked it up and turned it in his hands. Frail and brittle. Bleached paper white. He squatted in the long light holding it, the comicbook teeth loose in their sockets. The joints in the cranium like a ragged welding of the bone plates. The muted run of sand in the brainbox when he turned it.

What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenthearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise.

He rode back in the dark. The horse quickened its step. The last of the day's light fanned slowly upon the plain behind him and withdrew again down the edges of the world in a cooling blue of shadow and dusk and chill and a few last chitterings of birds sequestered in the dark and wiry brush. He crossed the old trace again and he must turn the pony up onto the plain and homeward but the warriors would ride on in that darkness they'd become, rattling past with their stone-age tools of war in default of all substance and singing softly in blood and longing south across the plains to Mexico.

THE HOUSE was built in eighteen seventy-two. Seventy-se-:en years later his grandfather was still the first man to die in it. What others had lain in state in that hallway had been carried there on a gate or wrapped in a wagonsheet or delivered crated up in a raw pineboard box with a teamster standing at the door with a bill of lading. The ones that came at all. For the most part they were dead by rumor. A yellowed scrap of newsprint. A letter. A telegram. The original ranch was twenty-three hundred acres out of the old Meusebach survey of the Fisher-Miller grant, the original house a oneroom hovel of sticks and wattle. That was in eighteen sixty-six. In that same year the first cattle were driven through what was still Bexar County and across the north end of the ranch and on to Fort Sumner and Denver. Five years later his great-grandfather sent six hundred steers over that same trail and with the money he built the house and by then the ranch was already eighteen thousand acres. In eighteen eighty-three they ran the first barbed wire. By eighty-six the buffalo were gone. That same winter a bad die-up. In eightynine Fort Concho was disbanded.

His grandfather was the oldest of eight boys and the only one to live past the age of twenty-five. They were drowned, shot, kicked by horses. They perished in fires. They seemed to fear only dying in bed. The last two were killed in Puerto Rico in eighteen ninety-eight and in that year he married and brought his bride home to the ranch and he must have walked out and stood looking at his holdings and reflected long upon the ways of God and the laws of primogeniture. Twelve years later when his wife was carried off in the influenza epidemic they still had no children. A year later he married his dead wife's older sister and a year after this the boy's mother was born and that was all the borning that there was. The Grade name was buried with that old man the day the norther blew the lawnchairs over the dead cemetery grass. The boy's name was Cole. John Grade Cole.

HE MET his father in the lobby of the St Angelus and they walked up Chadbourne Street to the Eagle Cafe and sat in a booth at the back. Some at the tables stopped talking when they came in. A few men nodded to his father and one said his name.

The waitress called evervbodv doll. She took their order and flirted with him. His father took out his cigarettes and lit one and put the pack on the table and put his Third Infantry Zippo lighter on top of it and leaned back and smoked and looked at him. He told him his uncle Ed Alison had gone up to the preacher after the funeral was said and shook his hand, the two of them standing there holding onto their hats and leaning thirty degrees into the wind like vaudeville comics while the canvas flapped and raged about them and the funeral attendants raced over the grounds after the lawnchairs, and he'd leaned into the preacher's face and screamed at him that it was a good thing they'd held the burial that morning because the way it was making up this thing could turn off into a real blow before the day was out.

His father laughed silently. Then he fell to coughing. He took a drink of water and sat smoking and shaking his head.

Buddy when he come back from up in the panhandle told me one time it quit blowin up there and all the chickens fell over.

The waitress brought their coffee. Here you go, doll, she said. I'll have your all's orders up in just a minute.

She's gone to San Antonio, the boy said.

Dont call her she.

Mama.

I know it.

They drank their coffee.

What do you aim to do?

About what?

About anything.

She can go where she wants to.

The boy watched him. You aint got no business smokin them things, he said.

His father pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the table and looked up. When I come around askin you what I'm supposed to do you'll know you're big enough to tell me, he said.

Yessir.

You need any money?

No.

He watched the boy. You'll be all right, he said.

The waitress brought their dinner, thick china lunchplates with steak and gravy and potatoes and beans.

I'll get your all's bread.

His father tucked his napkin into his shirt.

It aint me I was worried about, the boy said. Can I say that?

His father took up his knife and cut into the steak. Yeah, he said. You can say that.

The waitress brought the basket of rolls and set it on the table and went away. They ate. His father didn't eat much. After a while he pushed the plate back with his thumb and reached and got another cigarette and tapped it against the lighter and put it in his mouth and lit it.

You can say whatever's on your mind. Hell. You can bitch at me about smokin if you want.

The boy didnt answer.

You know it aint what I wanted dont you? Yeah. I know that.

You lookin after Rosco good? He aint been rode.

Why dont we go Saturday. All right.

You dont have to if you got somethin else to do. I aint got nothin else to do.

His father smoked, he watched him.

You dont have to if you dont want to, he said. I want to.

Can you and Arturo load and pick me up in town? Yeah.

What time?

What time'll you be up? I'll get up.

We'll be there at eight. I'll be up.

The boy nodded. He ate. His father looked around. I wonder who you need to see in this place to get some coffee, he said.

HE AND RAWLINS had unsaddled the horses and turned them out in the dark and they were lying on the saddleblankets and using the saddles for pillows. The night was cold and clear and the sparks rising from the fire raced hot and red among the stars. They could hear the trucks out on the highway and they could see the lights of the town reflected off the desert fifteen miles to the north.

What do you aim to do? Rawlins said.

I dont know. Nothin.

I dont know what you expect. Him two years oldern you. Got his own car and everthing.

There aint nothin to him. Never was.

What did she say?

She didnt say nothin. What would she say? There aint nothin to say.

Well I dont know what you expect.

I dont expect nothin.

Are you goin on Saturday?

No.

Rawlins took a cigarette out of his shirtpocket and sat up and took a coal from the fire and lit the cigarette. He sat smoking. I wouldnt let her get the best of me, he said.

He tipped the ash from the end of the cigarette against the heel of his boot.

She aint worth it. None of em are.

He didnt answer for a while. Then he said: Yes they are.

When he got back he rubbed down the horse and put him up and walked up to the house to the kitchen. Luisa had gone to bed and the house was quiet. He put his hand on the coffeepot to test it and he took down a cup and poured it and walked out and up the hallway.

He entered his grandfather's office and went to the desk and turned on the lamp and sat down in the old oak swivelchair. On the desk was a small brass calendar mounted on swivels that changed dates when you tipped it over in its stand. It still said September 13th. An ashtray. A glass paperweight. A blotter that said Palmer Feed and Supply. His mother's highschool graduation picture in a small silver frame.

The room smelled of old cigarsmoke. He leaned and turned off the little brass lamp and sat in the dark. Through the front window he could see the starlit prairie falling away to the north. The black crosses of the old telegraph poles yoked across the constellations passing east to west. His grandfather said the Comanche would cut the wires and splice them back with horsehair. He leaned back and crossed his boots on the desktop. Dry lightning to the north, forty miles distant. The clock struck eleven in the front room across the hall.

She came down the stairs and stood in the office doorway and turned on the wall switch light. She was in her robe and she stood with her arms cradled against her, her elbows in her palms. He looked at her and looked out the window again.

What are you doing? she said.

Settin.

She stood there in her robe for a long time. Then she turned and went back down the hall and up the stairs again. When he heard her door close he got up and turned off the light.

There were a few last warm days yet and in the afternoon sometimes he and his father would sit in the hotel room in the white wicker furniture with the window open and the thin crocheted curtains blowing into the room and they'd drink coffee and his father would pour a little whiskey in his own cup and sit sipping it and smoking and looking down at the street. There were oilfield scouts' cars parked along the street that looked like they'd been in a warzone.

If you had the money would you buy it? the boy said.

I had the money and I didnt.

You mean your backpay from the army?

No. Since then.

What's the most you ever won?

You dont need to know. Learn bad habits.

Why dont I bring the chessboard up some afternoon?

I aint got the patience to play.

You got the patience to play poker.

That's different.

What's different about it?

Money is what's different about it.

They sat.

There's still a lot of money in the ground out there, his father said. Number one I C Clark that come in last year was a big well.

He sipped his coffee. He reached and got his cigarettes off the table and lit one and looked at the boy and looked down at the street again. After a while he said:

I won twenty-six thousand dollars in twenty-two hours of play. There was four thousand dollars in the last pot, three of us in. Two boys from Houston. I won the hand with three natural queens.

He turned and looked at the boy. The boy sat with the cup in front of him halfway to his mouth. He turned and looked back out the window. I dont have a dime of it, he said.

What do you think I should do?

I dont think there's much you can do.

Will you talk to her?

I caint talk to her.

You could talk to her.

Last conversation we had was in San Diego California in nineteen forty-two. It aint her fault. I aint the same as I was. I'd like to think I am. But I aint.

You are inside. Inside you are.

His father coughed. He drank from his cup. Inside, he said. They sat for a long time.

She's in a play or somethin over there.

Yeah. I know.

The boy reached and got his hat off the floor and put it on his knee. I better get back, he said.

You know I thought the world of that old man, dont you? The boy looked out the window. Yeah, he said.

Dont go to cryin on me now.

I aint.

Well dont.

He never give up, the boy said. He was the one told me not to. He said let's not have a funeral till we got somethin to bury, if it aint nothin but his dogtags. They were fixin to give your clothes away.

His father smiled. They might as well of, he said. Only thing fit me was the boots.

He always thought you all would get back together.

Yeah, I know he did.

The boy stood and put on his hat. I better get on back, he said.

He used to get in fights over her. Even as a old man. Anybody said anything about her. If he heard about it. It wasnt even dignified.

I better get on.

Well.

He unpropped his feet from the windowsill. I'll walk down with you. I need to get the paper.

They stood in the tiled lobby while his father scanned the headlines.

How can Shirley Temple be getting divorced? he said.

He looked up. Early winter twilight in the streets. I might just get a haircut, he said.

He looked at the boy.

I know how you feel. I felt the same way.

The boy nodded. His father looked at the paper again and folded it.

The Good Book says that the meek shall inherit the earth and I expect that's probably the truth. I aint no freethinker, but I'll tell you what. I'm a long way from bein convinced that it's all that good a thing.

He looked at the boy. He took his key out of his coatpocket and handed it to him.

Go on back up there. There's somethin belongs to you in the closet.

The boy took the key. What is it? he said.

Just somethin I got for you. I was goin to give it to you at Christmas but I'm tired of walkin over it.

Yessir.

Anyway you look like you could use some cheerin up. Just leave the key at the desk when you come down.

Yessir.

I'll see you.

All right.

He rode back up in the elevator and walked down the hall and put the key in the door and walked in and went to the closet and opened it. Standing on the floor along with two pairs of boots and a pile of dirty shirts was a brand new Hamley Formfitter saddle. He picked it up by the horn and shut the closet door and carried it to the bed and swung it up and stood looking at it.

Hell fire and damnation, he said.

He left the key at the desk and swung out through the doors into the street with the saddle over his shoulder.

He walked down to South Concho Street and swung the saddle down and stood it in front of him. It was just dark and the streetlights had come on. The first vehicle along was a Model A Ford truck and it came skidding quarterwise to a halt on its mechanical brakes and the driver leaned across and rolled down the window part way and boomed at him in a whiskey voice: Throw that hull up in the bed, cowboy, and get in here.

Yessir, he said.

IT RAINED all the following week and cleared. Then it rained again. It beat down without mercy on the hard flat plains. The water was over the highway bridge at Christoval and the road was closed. Floods in San Antonio. In his grandfather's slicker he rode the Alicia pasture where the south fence was standing in water to the top wire. The cattle stood islanded, staring bleakly at the rider. Redbo stood staring bleakly at the cattle. He pressed the horse's flanks between his bootheels. Come on, he said. I dont like it no bettern you do.

He and Luisa and Arturo ate in the kitchen while she was gone. Sometimes at night after supper he'd walk out to the road and catch a ride into town and walk the streets or he'd stand outside the hotel on Beauregard Street and look up at the room on the fourth floor where his father's shape or father's shadow would pass behind the gauzy window curtains and then turn and pass back again like a sheetiron bear in a shooting-gallery only slower, thinner, more agonized.

When she came back they ate in the diningroom again, the two of them at opposite ends of the long walnut table while Luisa made the service. She carried out the last of the dishes and turned at the door.

Algo más, señora?

No, Luisa. Gracias.

Buenas noches, señora.

Buenas noches.

The door closed. The clock ticked. He looked up.

Why couldnt you lease me the ranch?

Lease you the ranch.

Yes.

I thought I said I didnt want to discuss it.

This is a new subject.

No it's not.

I'd give you all the money. You could do whatever you wanted.

All the money. You dont know what you're talking about. There's not any money. This place has barely paid expenses for twenty years. There hasnt been a white person worked here since before the war. Anyway you're sixteen years old, you cant run a ranch.

Yes I can.

You're being ridiculous. You have to go to school.

She put the napkin on the table and pushed back her chair and rose and went out. He pushed away the coffeecup in front of him. He leaned back in the chair. On the wall opposite above the sideboard was an oilpainting of horses. There were half a dozen of them breaking through a pole corral and their manes were long and blowing and their eyes wild. They'd been copied out of a book. They had the long Andalusian nose and the bones of their faces showed Barb blood. You could see the hindquarters of the foremost few, good hindquarters and heavy enough to make a cuttinghorse. As if maybe they had Steeldust in their blood. But nothing else matched and no such horse ever was that he had seen and he'd once asked his grandfather what kind of horses they were and his grandfather looked up from his plate at the painting as if he'd never seen it before and he said those are picturebook horses and went on eating.

HE WENT UP the stairs to the mezzanine and found Franklin's name lettered in an arc across the pebbled glass of the door and took off his hat and turned the knob and went in. The girl looked up from her desk.

I'm here to see Mr Franklin, he said. Did you have an appointment?

No mam. He knows me.

What's your name?

John Grady Cole.

Just a minute.

She went into the other room. Then she came out and nodded.

He rose and crossed the room. Come in son, said Franklin.

He walked in.

Set down.

He sat.

When he'd said what he had to say Franklin leaned back and looked out the window. He shook his head. He turned back and folded his hands on the desk in front of him. In the first place, he said, I'm not really at liberty to advise you. It's called conflict of interest. But I think I can tell you that it is her property and she can do whatever she wants with it.

I dont have any sayso.

You're a minor.

What about my father.

Franklin leaned back again. That's a sticky issue, he said.

They aint divorced.

Yes they are.

The boy looked up.

It's a matter of public record so I dont guess it's out of confidence. It was in the paper.

When?

It was made final three weeks ago.

He looked down. Franklin watched him.

It was final before the old man died.

The boy nodded. I see what you're sayin, he said.

It's a sorry piece of business, son. But I think the way it is is the way it's goin to be.

Couldnt you talk to her?

I did talk to her.

What did she say?

It dont matter what she said. She aint goin to change her mind.

He nodded. He sat looking down into his hat.

Son, not everbody thinks that life on a cattle ranch in west Texas is the second best thing to dyin and goin to heaven. She dont want to live out there, that's all. If it was a payin proposition that'd be one thing. But it aint.

It could be.

Well, I dont aim to get in a discussion about that. Anyway, she's a young woman and my guess is she'd like to have a little more social life than what she's had to get used to.

She's thirty-six years old.

The lawyer leaned back. He swiveled slightly in the chair, he tapped his lower lip with his forefinger. It's his own damned fault. He signed ever paper they put in front of him. Never lifted a hand to save himself. Hell, I couldnt tell him. I told him to get a lawyer. Told? I begged him.

Yeah, I know.

Wayne tells me he's quit goin to the doctor.

He nodded. Yeah. Well, I thank you for your time.

I'm sorry not to have better news for you. You damn sure welcome to talk to somebody else.

That's all right.

What are you doin out of school today?

I laid out.

The lawyer nodded. Well, he said. That would explain it. The boy rose and put on his hat. Thanks, he said.

The lawyer stood.

Some things in this world cant be helped, he said. And I believe this is probably one of em.

Yeah, the boy said.

AFTER CHRISTMAS She was gone all the time. He and Luisa and Arturo sat in the kitchen. Luisa couldnt talk about it without crying so they didnt talk about it. No one had even told her mother, who'd been on the ranch since before the turn of the century. Finally Arturo had to tell her. She listened and nodded and turned away and that was all.

In the morning he was standing by the side of the road at daybreak with a clean shirt and a pair of socks in a leather satchel together with his toothbrush and razor and shavingbrush. The satchel had belonged to his grandfather and the blanketlined duckingcoat he wore had been his father's. The first car that passed stopped for him. He got in and set the satchel on the floor and rubbed his hands together between his knees. The driver leaned across him and tried the door and then pulled the tall gearlever down into first and they set out.

That door dont shut good. Where are you goin?

San Antonio.

Well I'm goin as far as Brady Texas.

I appreciate it.

You a cattlebuyer?

Sir?

The man nodded at the satchel with its straps and brass catches. I said are you a cattlebuyer.

No sir. That's just my suitcase.

I allowed maybe you was a cattlebuyer. How long you been standin out there?

Just a few minutes.

The man pointed to a plastic knob on the dash that glowed a dull orange color. This thing's got a heater in it but it dont put out much. Can you feel it?

Yessir. Feels pretty good to me.

The man nodded at the gray and malignant dawn. He moved his leveled hand slowly before him. You see that? he said.

Yessir.

He shook his head. I despise the wintertime. I never did see what was the use in there even bein one.

He looked at John Grady.

You dont talk much, do you? he said.

Not a whole lot.

That's a good trait to have.

It was about a two hour drive to Brady.

They drove through the town and the man let him out on the other side.

You stay on Eighty-seven when you get to Fredericksburg. Dont get off on Two-ninety you'll wind up in Austin. You hear?

Yessir. I appreciate it.

He shut the door and the man nodded and lifted one hand and the car turned around in the road and went back. The next car by stopped and he climbed in.

How far you goin? the man said.

Snow was falling in the San Saba when they crossed it and snow was falling on the Edwards Plateau and in the Balcones the limestone was white with snow and he sat watching out while the gray flakes flared over the windshield glass in the sweep of the wipers. A translucent slush had begun to form along the edge of the blacktop and there was ice on the bridge over the Pedernales. The green water sliding slowly away past the dark bankside trees. The mesquites by the road so thick with mistletoe they looked like liveoaks. The driver sat hunched up over the wheel whistling silently to himself. They got into San Antonio at three oclock in the afternoon in a driving snowstorm and he climbed out and thanked the man and walked up the street and into the first cafe he came to and sat at the counter and put the satchel on the stool beside him. He took the little paper menu out of the holder and opened it and looked at it and looked at the clock on the back wall. The waitress set a glass of water in front of him.

Is it the same time here as it is in San Angelo? he said.

I knew you was goin to ask me somethin like that, she said. You had that look.

Do you not know?

I never been in San Angelo Texas in my life.

I'd like a cheeseburger and a chocolate milk.

Are you here for the rodeo?

No.

It's the same time, said a man down the counter.

He thanked him.

Same time, the man said. Same time.

She finished writing on her pad and looked up. I wouldnt go by nothin he said.

He walked around town in the snow. It grew dark early. He stood on the Commerce Street bridge and watched the snow vanish in the river. There was snow on the parked cars and the traffic in the street by dark had slowed to nothing, a few cabs or trucks, headlights making slowly through the falling snow and passing in a soft rumble of tires. He checked into the YMCA on Martin Street and paid two dollars for his room and went upstairs. He took off his boots and stood them on the radiator and took off his socks and draped them over the radiator beside the boots and hung up his coat and stretched out on the bed with his hat over his eyes.

At ten till eight he was standing in front of the boxoffice in his clean shirt with his money in his hand. He bought a seat in the balcony third row and paid a dollar twenty-five for it.

I never been here before, he said.

It's a good seat, the girl said.

He thanked her and went in and tendered his ticket to an usher who led him over to the red carpeted stairs and handed him the ticket back. He went up and found his seat and sat waiting with his hat in his lap. The theatre was half empty. When the lights dimmed some of the people in the balcony about him got up and moved forward to seats in front. Then the curtain rose and his mother came through a door onstage and began talking to a woman in a chair.

At the intermission he rose and put on his hat and went down to the lobby and stood in a gilded alcove and rolled a cigarette and stood smoking it with one boot jacked back against the wall behind him. He was not unaware of the glances that drifted his way from the theatregoers. He'd turned up one leg of his jeans into a small cuff and from time to time he leaned and tipped into this receptacle the soft white ash of his cigarette. He saw a few men in boots and hats and he nodded gravely to them, they to him. After a while the lights in the lobby dimmed again.

He sat leaning forward in the seat with his elbows on the empty seatback in front of him and his chin on his forearms and he watched the play with great intensity. He'd the notion that there would be something in the story itself to tell him about the way the world was or was becoming but there was not. There was nothing in it at all. When the lights came up there was applause and his mother came forward several times and all the cast assembled across the stage and held hands and bowed and then the curtain closed for good and the audience rose and made their way up the aisles. He sat for a long time in the empty theatre and then he stood and put on his hat and went out into the cold.

When he set out in the morning to get his breakfast it was still dark and the temperature stood at zero. There was half afoot of snow on the ground in Travis Park. The only cafe open was a Mexican one and he ordered huevos rancheros and coffee and sat looking through the paper. He thought there'd be something in the paper about his mother but there wasnt. He was the only customer in the cafe. The waitress was a young girl and she watched him. When she set the platter down he put the paper aside and pushed his cup forward.

Más cafe? she said.

Sí por favor.

She brought the coffee. Hace mucho frío, she said.

Bastante.

He walked up Broadway with his hands in his coatpockets and his collar turned up against the wind. He walked into the lobby of the Menger Hotel and sat in one of the lounge chairs and crossed one boot over the other and opened the paper.

She came through the lobby about nine oclock. She was on the arm of a man in a suit and a topcoat and they went out the door and got into a cab.

He sat there for a long time. After a while he got up and folded the paper and went to the desk. The clerk looked up at him.

Have you got a Mrs Cole registered? he said.

Cole?

Yes.

Just a minute.

The clerk turned away and checked the registrations. He shook his head. No, he said. No Cole.

Thanks, he said.

THEY RODE TOGETHER a last time on a day in early March when the weather had already warmed and yellow mexicanhat bloomed by the roadside. They unloaded the horses at McCullough's and rode up through the middle pasture along Grape Creek and into the low hills. The creek was clear and green with trailing moss braided over the gravel bars. They rode slowly up through the open country among scrub mesquite and nopal. They crossed from Tom Green County into Coke County. They crossed the old Schoonover road and they rode up through broken hills dotted with cedar where the ground was cobbled with traprock and they could see snow on the thin blue ranges a hundred miles to the north. They scarcely spoke all day. His father rode sitting forward slightly in the saddle, holding the reins in one hand about two inches above the saddlehorn. So thin and frail, lost in his clothes. Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world out there had been altered or made suspect by what he'd seen of it elsewhere. As if he might never see it right again. Or worse did see it right at last. See it as it had always been, would forever be. The boy who rode on slightly before him sat a horse not only as if he'd been born to it which he was but as if were he begot by malice or mischance into some queer land where horses never were he would have found them anyway. Would have known that there was something missing for the world to be right or he right in it and would have set forth to wander wherever it was needed for as long as it took until he came upon one and he would have known that that was what he sought and it would have been.

In the afternoon they passed through the ruins of an old ranch on that stony mesa where there were crippled fenceposts propped among the rocks that carried remnants of a wire not seen in that country for years. An ancient pickethouse. The wreckage of an old wooden windmill fallen among the rocks. They rode on. They walked ducks up out of potholes and in the evening they descended through low rolling hills and across the red clay floodplain into the town of Robert Lee.

They waited until the road was clear before they walked the horses. over the board bridge. The river was red with mud. They rode up Commerce Street and turned up Seventh and rode up Austin Street past the bank and dismounted and tied their horses in front of the cafe and went in.

The proprietor came over to take their order. He called them by name. His father looked up from the menu.

Go ahead and order, he said. He wont be here for a hour. What are you havin?

I think I'll just have some pie and coffee.

What kind of pie you got? the boy said.

The proprietor looked toward the counter.

Go on and get somethin to eat, his father said. I know you're hungry.

They ordered and the proprietor brought their coffee and went back to the counter. His father took a cigarette out of his shirtpocket.

You thought any more about boardin your horse?

Yeah, the boy said. Thought about it…

Wallace might let you feed and swamp out stalls and such as that. Trade it out thataway.

He aint goin to like it.

Who, Wallace?

No. Redbo.

His father smoked. He watched him.

You still seein that Barnett girl?

He shook his head.

She quit you or did you quit her?

I dont know.

That means she quit you.

Yeah.

His father nodded. He smoked. Two horsemen passed outside in the road and they studied them and the animals they rode. His father stirred his coffee a long time. There was nothing to stir because he drank it black. He took the spoon and laid it smoking on the paper napkin and raised the cup and looked at it and drank. He was still looking out the window although there was nothing there to see.

Your mother and me never agreed on a whole lot. She liked horses. I thought that was enough. That's how dumb I was. She was young and I thought she'd outgrow some of the notions she had but she didnt. Maybe they were just notions to me. It wasnt just the war. We were married ten years before the war come along. She left out of here. She was gone from the time you were six months old till you were about three. I know you know somethin about that and it was a mistake not to of told you. We separated. She was in California. Luisa looked after you. Her and Abuela.

He looked at the boy and he looked out the window again.

She wanted me to go out there, he said.

Why didnt you?

I did. I didnt last long at it.

The boy nodded.

She come back because of you, not me. I guess that's what I wanted to say.

Yessir.

The proprietor brought the boy's dinner and the pie. The boy reached for the salt and pepper. He didnt look up. The proprietor brought the coffeepot and filled their cups and went away. His father stubbed out his cigarette and picked up his fork and stabbed at the pie with it.

She's goin to be around a long longern me. I'd like to see you all make up your differences.

The boy didnt answer.

I wouldnt be here if it wasnt for her. When I was in Goshee I'd talk to her by the hour. I made her out to be like somebody who could do anything. I'd tell her about some of the other old boys that I didnt think was goin to make it and I'd ask her to look after them and to pray for them. Some of them did make it too. I guess I was a little crazy. Part of the time anyway. But if it hadnt of been for her I wouldnt of made it. No way in this world. I never told that to nobody. She dont even know it.

The boy ate. Outside it was growing dark. His father drank coffee. They waited for Arturo to come with the truck. The last thing his father said was that the country would never be the same.

People dont feel safe no more, he said. We're like the Comanches was two hundred years ago. We dont know what's goin to show up here come daylight. We dont even know what color they'll be.

THE NIGHT was almost warm. He and Rawlins lay in the road where they could feel the heat coming off the blacktop against their backs and they watched stars falling down the long black slope of the firmament. In the distance they heard a door slam. A voice called. A coyote that had been yammering somewhere in the hills to the south stopped. Then it began again.

Is that somebody hollerin for you? he said.

Probably, said Rawlins.

They lay spreadeagled on the blacktop like captives waiting some trial at dawn.

You told your old man? said Rawlins.

No.

You goin to?

What would be the point in it?

When do you all have to be out?

Closing's the first of June.

You could wait till then.

What for?

Rawlins propped the heel of one boot atop the toe of the other. As if to pace off the heavens. My daddy run off from home when he was fifteen. Otherwise I'd of been born in Alabama.

You wouldnt of been born at all.

What makes you say that?

Cause your mama's from San Angelo and he never would of met her.

He'd of met somebody.

So would she.

So?

So you wouldnt of been born.

I dont see why you say that. I'd of been born somewheres.

How?

Well why not?

If your mama had a baby with her other husband and your daddy had one with his other wife which one would you be?

I wouldnt be neither of em.

That's right.

Rawlins lay watching the stars. After a while he said: I could still be born. I might look different or somethin. If God wanted me to be born I'd be born.

And if He didnt you wouldnt.

You're makin my goddamn head hurt.

I know it. I'm makin my own.

They lay watching the stars.

So what do you think? he said.

I dont know, said Rawlins.

Well.

I could understand if you was from Alabama you'd have ever reason in the world to run off to Texas. But if you're already in Texas. I don't know. You got a lot more reason for leavin than me.

What the hell reason you got for stayin? You think somebody's goin to die and leave you somethin?

Shit no.

That's good. Cause they aint.

The door slammed. The voice called again.

I better get back, Rawlins said.

He rose and swiped at the seat of his jeans with one hand and put his hat on.

If I dont go will you go anyways?

John Grady sat up and put his hat on. I'm already gone, he said.

HE SAW HER one last time in town. He'd been to Cullen Cole's shop on North Chadbourne to get a broken bridlebit welded and he was coming up Twohig Street when she came out of the Cactus Drug. He crossed the street but she called to him and he stopped and waited while she came over.

Were you avoiding me? she said.

He looked at her. I guess I didnt have any thoughts about it one way or the other.

She watched him. A person cant help the way they feel, she said.

That's good all the way around, aint it?

I thought we could be friends.

He nodded. It's all right. I aint goin to be around here all that much longer.

Where are you going?

I aint at liberty to say.

Whyever not?

I just aint.

He looked at her. She was studying his face.

What do you think he'd say if he seen you standin here talkin to me?

He's not jealous.

That's good. That's a good trait to have. Save him a lot of aggravation.

What does that mean.

I dont mean nothin. I got to go.

Do you hate me?

No.

You dont like me.

He looked at her. You're wearin me out, girl, he said. What difference does it make? If you got a bad conscience just tell me what you want me to say and I'll say it.

It wouldnt be you saying it. Anyway I dont have a bad conscience. I just thought we could be friends.

He shook his head. It's just talk, Mary Catherine. I got to get on.

What if it is just talk? Everything's talk isnt it?

Not everything.

Are you really leaving San Angelo?

Yeah.

You'll be back.

Maybe.

I dont have any bad feelings against you.

You got no reason to.

She looked off up the street where he was looking but there wasnt much to look at. She turned back and he looked at her eyes but if they were wet it was just the wind. She held out her hand. At first he didnt know what she was doing.

I dont wish you anything but the best, she said.

He took her hand, small in his, familiar. He'd never shaken hands with a woman before. Take care of yourself, she said.

Thank you. I will.

He stood back and touched the brim of his hat and turned and went on up the street. He didnt look back but he could see her in the windows of the Federal Building across the street standing there and she was still standing there when he reached the corner and stepped out of the glass forever.

HE DISMOUNTED and opened the gate and walked the horse through and closed the gate and walked the horse along the fence. He dropped down to see if he could skylight Rawlins but Rawlins wasnt there. He dropped the reins at the fence corner and watched the house. The horse sniffed the air and pushed its nose against his elbow.

That you, bud? Rawlins whispered.

You better hope so.

Rawlins walked the horse down and stood and looked back at the house.

You ready? said John Grady.

Yeah.

They suspect anything?

Naw.

Well let's go.

Hang on a minute. I just piled everthing on top of the horse and walked him out here.

John Grady picked up the reins and swung up into the saddle. Yonder goes a light, he said.

Damn.

You'll be late for your own funeral.

It aint even four yet. You're early.

Well let's go. There goes the barn.

Rawlins was trying to get his soogan tied on behind the saddle. There's a switch in the kitchen, he said. He aint to the barn yet. He might not even be goin out there. He might just be gettin him a glass of milk or somethin.

He might just be loadin a shotgun or somethin.

Rawlins mounted up. You ready? he said.

I been ready.

They rode out along the fenceline and across the open pastureland. The leather creaked in the morning cold. They pushed the horses into a lope. The lights fell away behind them. They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

BY NOON the day following they'd made some forty miles. Still in country they knew. Crossing the old Mark Fury ranch in the night where they'd dismounted at the crossfences for John Grady to pull the staples with a catspaw and stand on the wires while Rawlins led the horses through and then raise the wires back and beat the staples into the posts and put the catspaw back in his saddlebag and mount up to ride on.

How the hell do they expect a man to ride a horse in this country? said Rawlins.

They dont, said John Grady.

They rode the sun up and ate the sandwiches John Grady had brought from the house and at noon they watered the horses at an old stone stocktank and walked them down a dry creekbed among the tracks of cattle and javelina to a stand of cottonwoods. There were cattle bedded under the trees that rose at their approach and stood looking at them and then moved off.

They lay in the dry chaff under the trees with their coats rolled up under their heads and their hats over their eyes while the horses grazed in the grass along the creekbed.

What did you bring to shoot? said Rawlins.

Just Grandad's old thumb-buster.

Can you hit anything with it?

No.

Rawlins grinned. We done it, didnt we?

Yeah.

You think they'll be huntin us?

What for?

I dont know. Just seems too damn easy in a way.

They could hear the wind and they could hear the sound of the horses cropping.

I'll tell you what, said Rawlins.

Tell me.

I dont give a damn.

John Grady sat up and took his tobacco from his shirtpocket and began making a cigarette. About what? he said.

He wet the cigarette and put it in his mouth and took out his matches and lit the cigarette and blew the match out with the smoke. He turned and looked at Rawlins but Rawlins was asleep.

They rode on again in the late afternoon. By sunset they could hear trucks on a highway in the distance and in the long cool evening they rode west along a rise from which they could see the headlights on the highway going out and coming back random and periodic in their slow exchange. They came to a ranch road and followed it out to the highway where there was a gate. They sat the horses. They could see no gate on the far side of the highway. They watched the lights of the trucks along the fence both east and west but there was no gate there.

What do you want to do? said Rawlins.

I dont know. I'd like to of got across this thing tonight.

I aint leadin my horse down that highway in the dark.

John Grady leaned and spat. I aint either, he said.

It was growing colder. The wind rattled the gate and the horses stepped uneasily.

What's them lights? said Rawlins.

I'd make it Eldorado.

How far is that do you reckon?

Ten, fifteen miles.

What do you want to do?

They spread their bedrolls in a wash and unsaddled and tied the horses and slept till daybreak. When Rawlins sat up John Grady had already saddled his horse and was strapping on his bedroll. There's a cafe up the road here, he said. Could you eat some breakfast?

Rawlins put on his hat and reached for his boots. You're talkin my language, son.

They led the horses up through a midden of old truckdoors and transmissions and castoff motorparts behind the cafe and they watered them at a metal tank used for locating leaks in innertubes. A Mexican was changing a tire on a truck and John Grade walked over and asked him where the men's room was. He nodded down the side of the building.

He got his shaving things out of his saddlebag and went into the washroom and shaved and washed and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. When he came out the horses were tied to a picnic table under some trees and Rawlins was in the cafe drinking coffee.

He slid into the booth. You ordered? he said.

Waitin on you.

The proprietor came over with another cup of coffee. What'll you boys have? he said.

Go ahead, said Rawlins.

He ordered three eggs with ham and beans and biscuits and Rawlins ordered the same with a sideorder of hotcakes and syrup.

You better load up good.

You watch me, said Rawlins.

They sat with their elbows propped on the table and looked out the window south across the plains to the distant mountains lying folded in their shadows under the morning sun.

That's where we're headed, said Rawlins.

He nodded. They drank their coffee. The man brought their breakfasts on heavy white crockery platters and came back with the coffeepot. Rawlins had peppered his eggs till they were black. He spread butter over the hotcakes.

There's a man likes eggs with his pepper, said the proprietor.

He poured their cups and went back to the kitchen.

You pay attention to your old dad now, Rawlins said. I'll show you how to deal with a unruly breakfast.

Do it, said John Grady.

Might just order the whole thing again.

The store had nothing in the way of feed. They bought a box of dried oatmeal and paid their bill and went out. John Grady cut the paper drum in two with his knife and they poured the oatmeal into a couple of hubcaps and sat on the picnic table and smoked while the horses ate. The Mexican came over to look at the horses. He was not much older than Rawlins.

Where you headed? he said.

Mexico.

What for?

Rawlins looked at John Grady. You think he can be trusted? Yeah. He looks all right.

We're runnin from the law, Rawlins said.

The Mexican looked them over.

We robbed a bank.

He stood looking at the horses. You aint robbed no bank, he said.

You know that country down there? said Rawlins.

The Mexican shook his head and spat. I never been to Mexico in my life.

When the animals had eaten they saddled them again and led them around to the front of the cafe and down the drive and across the highway. They walked them along the bar ditch to the gate and led them through the gate and closed it. Then they mounted up and rode out the dirt ranch road. They rode it for a mile or so until it veered away to the east and they left it and set out south across the rolling cedar plains.

They reached the Devil's River by midmorning and watered the horses and stretched out in the shade of a stand of blackwillow and looked at the map. It was an oilcompany roadmap that Rawlins had picked up at the cafe and he looked at it and he looked south toward the gap in the low hills. There were roads and rivers and towns on the American side of the map as far south as the Rio Grande and beyond that all was white.

It dont show nothin down there, does it? said Rawlins.

No.

You reckon it aint never been mapped?

There's maps. That just aint one of em. I got one in my saddlebag.

Rawlins came back with the map and sat on the ground and traced their route with his finger. He looked up.

What? said John Grady.

There aint shit down there.

They left the river and followed the dry valley to the west. The country was rolling and grassy and the day was cool under the sun.

You'd think there'd be more cattle in this country, Rawlins said.

You'd think so.

They walked doves and quail up out of the grass along the ridges. Now and then a rabbit. Rawlins stepped down and slid his little 25-2o carbine out of the bootleg scabbard he carried it in and walked out along the ridge. John Grady heard him shoot. In a little while he came back with a rabbit and he reholstered the carbine and took out his knife and walked off a ways and squatted and gutted the rabbit. Then he rose and wiped the blade on his trouserleg and folded shut the knife and came over and took his horse and tied the rabbit by its hind legs to his bedroll strap and mounted up again and they went on.

Late afternoon they crossed a road that ran to the south and in the evening they reached Johnson's Run and camped at a pool in the otherwise dry gravel bed of the watercourse and watered the horses and hobbled them and turned them out to graze. They built a fire and skinned out the rabbit and skewered it on a green limb and set it to broil at the edge of the fire. John Grady opened his blackened canvas campbag and took out a small enameled tin coffeepot and went to the creek and filled it. They sat and watched the fire and they watched the thin crescent moon above the black hills to the west.

Rawlins rolled a cigarette and lit it with a coal and lay back against his saddle. I'm goin to tell you somethin.

Tell it.

I could get used to this life.

He drew on the cigarette and held it out to one side and tapped the ash with a delicate motion of his forefinger. It wouldnt take me no time at all.

They rode all day the day following through rolling hill country, the low caprock mesas dotted with cedar, the yuccas in white bloom along the eastfacing slopes. They struck the Pandale road in the evening and turned south and followed the road into town.

Nine buildings including a store and filling station. They tied their horses in front of the store and went in. They were dusty, and Rawlins was unshaven and they smelled of horses and sweat and woodsmoke. Some men sitting in chairs at the back of the store looked up when they entered and then went on talking.

They, stood at the meatcase. The woman came from the counter and walked behind the case and took down an apron and pulled a chain that turned on the overhead lightbulb.

You do look like some kind of desperado, John Grady said.

You dont look like no choir director, said Rawlins.

The woman tied the apron behind her and turned to regard them above the white enameled top of the meatcase. What'll you boys have? she said.

They bought baloney and cheese and a loaf of bread and a jar of mayonnaise. They bought a box of crackers and a dozen tins of vienna sausage. They bought a dozen packets of koolaid and a slab end of bacon and some tins of beans and they bought a five pound bag of cornmeal and a bottle of hotsauce. The woman wrapped the meat and cheese separate and she wet a pencil with her tongue and totted up the purchases and then put everything together in a number four grocery bag.

Where you boys from? she said.

From up around San Angelo.

You all ride them horses down here?

Yes mam.

Well I'll declare, she said.

When they woke in the morning they were in plain view of a small adobe house. A woman had come out of the house and slung a pan of dishwater into the yard. She looked at them and went back in again. They'd hung their saddles over a fence to dry and while they were getting them a man came out and stood watching them. They saddled the horses and led them out to the road and mounted up and turned south.

`Fonder what all they're doin back home? Rawlins said.

John Grady leaned and spat. Well, he said, probably they're havin the biggest time in the world. Probably struck oil. I'd say they're in town about now pickin out their new cars and all.

Shit, said Rawlins.

Thev rode.

You, ever get ill at ease? said Rawlins.

About what?

I dont know. About anything. Just ill at ease.

Sometimes. If you're someplace you aint supposed to be I guess you'd be ill at ease. Should be anyways.

`Fell suppose you were ill at ease and didnt know why. Would that mean that you might be someplace you wasnt supposed to be and didnt know it?

"'hat the hell's wrong with you?

I dont know. Nothin. I believe I'll sing.

He did. He sang: Will you miss me, will you miss me. Will you miss me when I'm gone.

You know that Del Rio radio station? he said.

Yeah, I know it.

I've heard it told that at night you can take a fencewire in your teeth and pick it up. Dont even need a radio.

You believe that?

I dont know.

You ever tried it?

Yeah. One time.

They rode on. Rawlins sang. What the hell is a flowery boundary, tree? he said.

You got me, cousin.

They passed under a high limestone bluff where a creek ran down and they crossed a broad gravel wash. Upstream were potholes from the recent rains where a pair of herons stood footed to their long shadows. One rose and flew, one stood. An hour later they crossed the Pecos River, putting the horses into the ford, the water swift and clear and partly salt running over the limestone bedrock and the horses studying the water before them and placing their feet with great care on the broad traprock plates and eyeing the shapes of trailing moss in the rips below the ford where they flared and twisted electric green in the morning light. Rawlins leaned from the saddle and wet his hand in the river and tasted it. It's gypwater, he said.

They dismounted among the willows on the far side and made sandwiches with the lunchmeat and cheese and ate and sat smoking and watching the river pass. There's been somebody followin us, John Grady said.

Did you see em?

Not of yet.

Somebody horseback?

Yeah.

Rawlins studied the road across the river. Why aint it just somebody ridin?

Cause they'd of showed up at the river by now.

Maybe they turned off.

Where to?

Rawlins smoked. What do you reckon they want?

I dont know.

What do you want to do?

Let's just ride. They'll either show or they wont.

They came up out of the river breaks riding slowly side by side along the dusty road and onto a high plateau where they could see out over the country to the south, rolling country covered with grass and wild daisies. To the west a mile away ran a wire fence strung from pole to pole like a bad suture across the gray grasslands and beyond that a small band of antelope all of whom were watching them. John Grady turned his horse sideways and sat looking back down the road. Rawlins waited.

Is he back there? he said.

Yeah. Somewheres.

They rode till they came to a broad swale or bajada in the plateau. A little off to the right was a stand of closegrown cedar and Rawlins nodded at the cedars and slowed his horse.

Why dont we lay up yonder and wait on him?

John Grady looked back down the road. All right, he said. Let's ride on a ways and then double back. He sees our tracks quit the road here he'll know where we're at.

All right.

They rode on another half mile and then left the road and cut back toward the cedars and dismounted and tied their horses and sat on the ground.

You reckon we got time for a smoke? said Rawlins.

Smoke em if you got em, said John Grady.

They sat smoking and watching the backroad. They waited a long time but nobody came. Rawlins lay back and put his hat over his eyes. I aint sleepin, he said. I'm just restin.

He hadnt been asleep long before John Grady kicked his boot. He sat up and put on his hat and looked. A rider was coming along the road. Even at that distance they both remarked on the horse.

He came along till he was not more than a hundred yards down the road. He had on a broadbrim hat and bib overalls. He slowed the horse and looked down the bajada directly at them. Then he came on again.

It's some kid, Rawlins said.

That's a hell of a horse, said John Grady.

Aint it though.

You think he saw us?

No.

What do you want to do?

Give him a minute and then we'll just ride into the road behind him.

They waited till he was all but out of sight and then they untied the horses and mounted and rode up out of the trees and into the road.

When he heard them he stopped and looked back. He pushed his hat back on his head and sat the horse in the road and watched them. They rode up one at either side.

You huntin us? said Rawlins.

He was a kid about thirteen vears old.

No, he said. I aint huntin you.

How come you followin us?

I aint followin you.

Rawlins looked at John Grady. John Grady was watching the kid. He looked off toward the distant mountains and then back at the kid and finally at Rawlins. Rawlins sat with his hands composed upon the pommel of his saddle. You aint been followin us? he said.

I'm goin to Langtry, the kid said. I dont know who you all are.

Rawlins looked at John Grady. John Grady was rolling a smoke and studying the kid and his outfit and his horse.

Where'd you get the horse? he said.

It's my horse.

He put the cigarette in his mouth and took a wooden match from his shirtpocket and popped it with his thumbnail and lit the cigarette. Is that your hat? he said.

The boy looked up at the hatbrim over his eyes. He looked at Rawlins.

How old are you? said John Grady.

Sixteen.

Rawlins spat. You're a lyin sack of green shit.

You dont know everthing.

I know you aint no goddamn sixteen. Where are you comin from?

Pandale.

You seen us in Pandale last night, didnt you?

Yeah.

What'd you do, run off?

He looked from one of them to the other. What if I did?

Rawlins looked at John Grady. "'hat do you want to do?

I dont know.

We could sell that horse in Mexico.

Yeah.

I aint diggin no grave like we done that last one.

Hell, said John Grady, that was your idea. I was the one said just leave him for the buzzards.

You want to flip to see who gets to shoot him?

Yeah. Go ahead.

Call it, said Rawlins.

Heads.

The coin spun in the air. Rawlins caught it and slapped it down on top of his wrist and held his wrist where they could see it and lifted his hand away.

Heads, he said.

Let me have your rifle.

It aint fair, said Rawlins. You shot the last three.

Well go on then. You can owe me.

Well hold his horse. He might not be gunbroke.

You all are just funnin, said the boy.

What makes you so sure?

You aint shot nobody.

What makes you think you wouldnt be somebody good to start with?

You all are just funnin. I knowed you was all along.

Sure you did, said Rawlins.

Who's huntin you? John Grady said.

Nobody.

They're huntin that horse though, aint they?

He didnt answer.

You really headed for Langtry?

Yeah.

You aint ridin with us, said Rawlins. You'll get us thowed in the jailhouse.

It belongs to me, the boy said.

Son, said Rawlins, I dont give a shit who it belongs to. But it damn sure dont belong to you. Let's go bud.

They turned their horses and chucked them up and trotted out along the road south again. They didnt look back.

I thought he'd put up more of a argument, said Rawlins.

John Grady flipped the stub of the cigarette into the road before them. We aint seen the last of his skinny ass.

By noon they'd left the road and were riding southwest through the open grassland. They watered their horses at a steel stocktank under an old F W Axtell windmill that creaked slowly in the wind. To the south there were cattle shaded up in a stand of emory oak. They meant to lay clear of Langtry and they talked about crossing the river at night. The day was warm and they washed out their. shirts and put them on wet and mounted up and rode on. They could see the road behind them for several miles back to the northeast but they saw no rider.

That evening they crossed the Southern Pacific tracks just east of Pumpville Texas and made camp a half mile on the far side of the right of way. By the time they had the horses brushed and staked and a fire built it was dark. John Grady stood his saddle upright to the fire and walked out on the prairie and stood listening. He could see the Pumpville watertank against the purple sky. Beside it the horned moon. He could hear the horses cropping grass a hundred yards away. The prairie otherwise lay blue and silent all about.

They crossed highway 90 midmorning of the following day and rode out onto a pastureland dotted with grazing cattle. Far to the south the mountains of Mexico drifted in and out of the uncertain light of a moving cloud-cover like ghosts of mountains. Two hours later they were at the river. They sat on a low bluff and took off their hats and watched it. The water was the color of clay and roily and they could hear it in the rips downstream. The sandbar below them was thickly grown with willow and carrizo cane and the bluffs on the far side were stained and cavepocked and traversed by a constant myriad of swallows. Beyond that the desert rolled as before. They turned and looked at each other and put on their hats.

They rode upriver to where a creek cut in and they rode down the creek and out onto a gravel bar and sat the horses and studied the water and the country about. Rawlins rolled a cigarette and crossed one leg over the pommel of the saddle and sat smoking.

Who is it we're hidin from? he said.

Who aint we?

I dont see where anybody could be hidin over there.

They might say they same thing lookin at this side.

Rawlins sat smoking. He didnt answer.

We can cross right down yonder off of that shoal, John Grady said.

Why dont we do it now?

John Grady leaned and spat into the river. I'll do whatever you want, he said. I thought we agreed to play it safe.

I'd sure like to get it behind me if we're goin to.

I would too pardner. He turned and looked at Rawlins.

Rawlins nodded. All right, he said.

They rode back up the creek and dismounted and unsaddled the horses on the gravel bar and staked them out in the creekside grass. They sat under the shade of the willows and ate vienna sausages and crackers and drank koolaid made from creekwater. You think they got vienna sausages in Mexico? Rawlins said.

Late in the afternoon he walked up the creek and stood on the level prairie with his hat in his hand and looked out across the blowing grass to the northeast. A rider was crossing the plain a mile away. He watched him.

When he got back to the camp he woke up Rawlins.

What is it? said Rawlins.

There's somebody comin. I think it's that gunsel.

Rawlins adjusted his hat and climbed up the bank and stood looking.

Can you make him out? called John Grady.

Rawlins nodded. He leaned and spat.

If I cant make him out I can damn sure make out that horse. Did he see you?

I dont know.

He's headed this way.

He probably seen me.

I think we ought to run him off.

He looked back at John Grady again. I got a uneasy feelin about that little son of a bitch.

I do too.

He aint as green as he looks, neither.

What's he doin? said John Grady.

Ridin.

Well come on back down. He might not of seen us.

He's stopped, said Rawlins.

What's he doin?

Ridin again.

They waited for him to arrive if he would. It wasnt long before the horses raised their heads and stood staring downstream. They heard the rider come down into the creek bed, a rattling of gravel and a faint chink of metal.

Rawlins got his rifle and they walked out down the creek to the river. The kid was sitting the big bay horse in the shallow water off the gravel bar and looking across the river. When he turned and saw them he pushed his hat back with his thumb.

I knowed you all hadnt crossed, he said. There's two deer feedin along the edge of them mesquite yon side.

Rawlins squatted on the gravel bar and stood the rifle in front of him and held it and rested his chin on the back of his arm. What the hell are we goin to do with you? he said.

The kid looked at him and he looked at John Grady. There wont be nobody huntin me in Mexico.

That all depends on what you done, said Rawlins.

I aint done nothin.

What's your name? said John Grady.

Jimmy Blevins.

Bullshit, said Rawlins. Jimmy Blevins is on the radio.

That's another Jimmy Blevins.

Who's followin you?

Nobody.

How do you know?

Cause there aint.

Rawlins looked at John Grady and he looked at the kid again. You got any grub? he said.

No.

You got any money?

No.

You're just a deadhead.

The kid shrugged. The horse took a step in the water and stopped again.

Rawlins shook his head and spat and looked out across the river. Tell me just one thing.

All right.

What the hell would we want you with us for?

He didnt answer. He sat looking at the sandy water running past them and at the thin wicker shadows of the willows running out over the sandbar in the evening light. He looked out to the blue sierras to the south and he hitched up the shoulder strap of his overalls and sat with his thumb hooked in the bib and turned and looked at them.

Cause I'm an American, he said.

Rawlins turned away and shook his head.

They crossed the river under a white quartermoon naked and pale and thin atop their horses. They'd stuffed their boots upside down into their jeans and stuffed their shirts and jackets after along with their warbags of shaving gear and ammunition and they belted the jeans shut at the waist and tied the legs loosely about their necks and dressed only in their hats they led the horses out onto the gravel spit and loosed the girthstraps and mounted and put the horses into the water with their naked heels.

Midriver the horses were swimming, snorting and stretching their necks out of the water, their tails afloat behind. They quartered downstream with the current, the naked riders leaning forward and talking to the horses, Rawlins holding the rifle aloft in one hand, lined out behind one another and making for the alien shore like a party of marauders.

They rode up out of the river among the willows and rode singlefile upstream through the shallows onto a long gravel beach where thev took off their hats and turned and looked back at the country they'd left. No one spoke. Then suddenly they put their horses to a gallop up the beach and turned and came back, fanning with their hats and laughing and pulling up and patting the horses on the shoulder.

Goddamn, said Rawlins. You know where we're at?

They sat the smoking horses in the moonlight and looked at one another. Then quietly they dismounted and unslung their clothes from about their necks and dressed and led the horses up out of the willow breaks and gravel benches and out upon the plain where they mounted and rode south onto the dry scrublands of Coahuila.

They camped at the edge of a mesquite plain and in the morning they cooked bacon and beans and cornbread made from meal and water and they sat eating and looking out at the country.

When'd you eat last? Rawlins said.

The other day, said the Blevins boy.

The other day.

Yeah.

Rawlins studied him. Your name aint Blivet is it?

It's Blevins.

You know what a blivet is?

What.

A blivet is ten pounds of shit in a five pound sack.

Blevins stopped chewing. He was looking out at the country to the west where cattle had come out of the breaks and were standing on the plain in the morning sun. Then he went on chewing again.

You aint said what your all's names was, he said.

You aint never asked.

That aint how I was raised, said Blevins.

Rawlins stared at him bleakly and turned away.

John Grady Cole, said John Grady. This here is Lacey Rawlins.

The kid nodded. He went on chewing.

We're from up around San Angelo, said John Grady.

I aint never been up there.

They waited for him to say where he was from but he didnt say.

Rawlins swabbed out his plate with a crumbly handful of the cornbread and ate it. Suppose, he said, that we wanted to trade that horse off for one less likely to get us shot.

The kid looked at John Grady and looked back out to where the cattle were standing. I aint tradin horses, he said.

You dont care for us to have to look out for you though, do you?

I can look out for myself.

Sure you can. I guess you got a gun and all.

He didnt answer for a minute. Then he said: I got a gun.

Rawlins looked up. Then he went on spooning up the cornbread. What kind of a gun? he said.

Thirty-two twenty Colt.

Bullshit, said Rawlins. That's a rifle cartridge.

The kid had finished eating and sat swabbing out his plate with a twist of grass.

Let's see it, said Rawlins.

He set the plate down. He looked at Rawlins and then he looked at John Grady. Then he reached into the bib of his overalls and came out with the pistol. He rolled it in his hand with a forward flip and handed it toward Rawlins butt-first upside down.

Rawlins looked at him and looked at the pistol. He set his plate down in the grass and took the gun and turned it in his hand. It was an old Colt Bisley with guttapercha grips worn smooth of their checkering. The metal was a dull gray. He turned it so as to read the script on top of the barrel. It said 3z-zo. He looked at the kid and flipped open the gate with his thumb and put the hammer at halfcock and turned the cylinder and ran one of the shells into his palm with the ejector rod and looked at it. Then he put it back and closed the gate and let the hammer back down.

Where'd you get a gun like this? he said.

At the gittin place.

You ever shot it?

Yeah, I shot it.

Can you hit anything with it?

The kid held out his hand for the pistol. Rawlins hefted it in his palm and turned it and passed it to him.

You want to throw somethin up I'll hit it, the kid said.

Bullshit.

The kid shrugged and put the pistol back in the bib of his overalls.

Throw what up? said Rawlins.

Anything you want.

Anything I throw you can hit.

Yeah.

Bullshit.

The kid stood up. He wiped the plate back and forth across the leg of his overalls and looked at Rawlins.

You throw your pocketbook up in the air and I'll put a hole in it, he said.

Rawlins stood. He reached in his hip pocket and took out his billfold. The kid leaned and set the plate in the grass and took out the pistol again. John Grady put his spoon in his plate and set the plate on the ground. The three of them walked out onto the plain in the long morning light like duelists.

He stood with his back to the sun and the pistol hanging alongside his leg. Rawlins turned and grinned at John Grady. He held the billfold between his thumb and finger.

You ready, Annie Oakley? he said.

Waitin on you.

He pitched it up underhanded. It rose spinning in the air, very small against the blue. They watched it, waiting for him to shoot. Then he shot. The billfold jerked sideways off across the landscape and opened out and fell twisting to the ground like a broken bird.

The sound of the pistolshot vanished almost instantly in that immense silence. Rawlins walked out across the grass and bent and picked up his billfold and put it in his pocket and came back.

We better get goin, he said.

Let's see it, said John Grady.

Let's go. We need to get away from this river.

They caught their horses and saddled them and the kid kicked out the fire and they mounted up and rode out.

They rode side by side spaced out apart upon the broad gravel plain curving away along the edge of the brushland upriver. They rode without speaking and they took in the look of the new country. A hawk in the top of a mesquite dropped down and flew low along the vega and rose again up into a tree a half mile to the east. When they had passed it flew back again.

You had that pistol in your shirt back on the Pecos, didnt you? said Rawlins.

The kid looked at him from under his immense hat. Yeah, he said.

They rode. Rawlins leaned and spat. You'd of shot me with it I guess.

The kid spat also. I didnt aim to get shot, he said.

They rode up through low hills covered with nopal and creosote. Midmorning they struck a trail with horsetracks in it and turned south and at noon they rode into the town of Reforma.

They rode singlefile down the cart track that served as a street. Half a dozen low houses with walls of mud brick slumping into ruin. A few jacales of brush and mud with brush roofs and a pole corral where five scrubby horses with big heads stood looking solemnly at the horses passing in the road.

They dismounted and tied their horses at a little mud tienda and entered. A girl was sitting in a straightback chair by a sheetiron stove in the center of the room reading a comicbook by the light from the doorway and she looked up at them and looked at the comicbook and then looked up again. She got up and glanced toward the back of the store where a green curtain hung across a doorway and she put the book down in the chair and crossed the packed clay floor to the counter and turned and stood. On top of the counter were three clay jars or ollas. Two of them were empty but the third was covered with the tin lid from a lardpail and the lid was notched to accommodate the handle of an enameled tin dipper. Along the wall behind her were three or four board shelves that held canned goods and cloth and thread and candy. Against the far wall was a handmade pineboard mealbox. Above it a calendar nailed to the mud wall with a stick. Other than the stove and the chair that was all there was in the building.

Rawlins took off his hat and pressed his forearm against his forehead and put the hat back on. He looked at John Grady. She got anything to drink?

Tiene algo que tomar? said John Grady.

Sí, said the girl. She moved to take up her station behind the jars and lifted away the lid. The three riders stood at the counter and looked.

What is that? said Rawlins.

Sidrón, said the girl.

John Grady looked at her. Habla inglés? he said.

Oh no, she said.

What is it? said Rawlins.

Cider.

He looked into the jar. Let's have em, he said. Give us three.

Mande?

Three, said Rawlins. Tres. He held up three fingers.

He got out his billfold. She reached to the shelves behind and got down three tumblers and stood them on the board and took up the dipper and dredged up a thin brown liquid and filled the glasses and Rawlins laid a dollar bill on the counter. It had a hole in it at each end. They reached for the glasses and John Grade nodded at the bill.

He about deadcentered your pocketbook didnt he?

Yeah, said Rawlins.

He lifted up his glass and they drank. Rawlins stood thoughtfully.

I dont know what that shit is, he said. But it tastes pretty good to a cowboy. Let us have three more here.

They set their glasses down and she refilled them. What do we owe? said Rawlins.

She looked at John Grady.

Cuánto, said John Gradv.

Para todo?

Sí.

Uno cincuenta.

How much is that? said Rawlins.

It's about three cents a glass.

Rawlins pushed the bill across the counter. You let your old dad buy, he said.

She made change out of a cigar box under the counter and laid the Mexican coins out on the counter and looked up. Rawlins set his empty glass down and gestured at it and paid for three more glasses and took his change and they took their glasses and walked outside.

They sat in the shade of the pole and brush ramada in front of the place and sipped their drinks and looked out at the desolate stillness of the little crossroads at noon. The mud huts. The dusty agave and the barren gravel hills beyond. A thin blue rivulet of drainwater ran down the clay gully in front of the store and a goat stood in the rutted road looking at the horses.

There aint no electricity here, said Rawlins.

He sipped his drink. He looked out down the road.

I doubt there's ever even been a car in here.

I dont know where it would come from, said John Grady. Rawlins nodded. He held the glass to the light and rolled the cider around and looked at it. You think this here is some sort of cactus juice or what?

I dont know, said John Grady. It's got a little kick to it, dont it?

I think it does.

Better not let that youngn have no more.

I've drunk whiskey, said Blevins. This aint nothin.

Rawlins shook his head. Drinkin cactus juice in old Mexico, he said. What do you reckon they're sayin at home about now?

I reckon they're sayin we're gone, said John Grady.

Rawlins sat with his legs stretched out before him and his boots crossed and his hat over one knee and looked out at the alien land and nodded. We are, aint we? he said.

They watered the horses and loosed the cinches to let them blow and then took the road south such road as it was, riding single file through the dust. In the road were the tracks of cows, javelinas, deer, coyotes. Late afternoon they passed another collection of huts but they rode on. The road was deeply Bullied and it was washed out in the draws and in the draws were cattle dead from an old drought, just the bones of them cloven about with the hard dry blackened hide.

How does this country suit you? said John Grady.

Rawlins leaned and spat but he didnt answer.

In the evening they came to a small estancia and sat the horses at the fence. There were several buildings scattered out behind the house and a pole corral with two horses standing in it. Two little girls in white dresses stood in the yard. They looked at the riders and then turned and ran into the house. A man came out.

Buenas tardes, he said.

He walked out the fence to the gate and motioned them through and showed them where to water their horses. Pásale, he said. Pásale.

They ate by oillight at a small painted pine table. The mud walls about them were hung with old calendars and magazine pictures. On one wall was a framed tin retablo of the Virgin. Under it was a board supported by two wedges driven into the wall and on the board was a small green glass with a blackened candlestub in it. The Americans sat shoulder to shoulder along one side of the table and the two little girls sat on the other side and watched them in a state of breathlessness. The woman ate with her head down and the man joked with them and passed the plates. They ate beans and tortillas and a Chile of goatmeat ladled up out of a clay pot. They drank coffee from enameled tin cups and the man pushed the bowls toward them and gestured elaborately. Deben comer, he said.

He wanted to know about America, thirty miles to the north. He'd seen it once as a boy, across the river at Acuña. He had brothers who worked there. He had an uncle who'd lived some years in Uvalde Texas but he thought he was dead.

Rawlins finished his plate and thanked the woman and John Grady told her what he'd said and she smiled and nodded demurely. Rawlins was showing the two little girls how he could pull his finger off and put it back on again when Blevins crossed his utensils in the plate before him and wiped his mouth on his sleeve and leaned back from the table. There was no back to the bench and Blevins flailed wildly for a moment and then crashed to the floor behind him, kicking the table underneath and rattling the dishes and almost pulling over the bench with Rawlins and John Grady. The two girls stood instantly and clapped their hands and shrieked with delight. Rawlins had gripped the table to save himself and he looked down at the boy lying in the floor. I'll be goddamned, he said. Excuse me mam.

Blevins struggled up, only the man offering to help him.

Está bien? he said.

He's all right, said Rawlins. You caint hurt a fool.

The woman had leaned forward to right a cup, to quiet the children. She could not laugh for the impropriety of it but the brightness in her eves did not escape even Blevins. He climbed over the bench and sat down again.

Are you all ready to go? he whispered.

We aint done eatin, said Rawlins.

He looked around uneasily. I caint set here, he said.

He was sitting with his head lowered and was whispering hoarsely.

Why caint you set there? said Rawlins.

I dont like to be laughed at.

Rawlins looked at the girls. They were sitting again and their eves were wide and serious again. Hell, he said. It's just kids. y I dont like to be laughed at, whispered Blevins.

Both the man and the woman were looking at them with concern.

If you dont like to be laughed at dont fall on your ass, said Rawlins.

You all excuse me, said Blevins.

He climbed out over the bench and picked up his hat and put it on and went out. The man of the house looked worried and he leaned to John Grady and made a whispered inquiry. The two girls sat looking down at their plates.

You think he'll ride on? said Rawlins.

John Grady shrugged. I doubt it.

The householders seemed to be waiting for one of them to get up and go out after him but they did not. They drank their coffee and after a while the woman rose and cleared away the plates.

John Grady found him sitting on the ground like a figure in meditation.

What are you doin? he said.

Nothin.

Why dont you come back inside.

I'm wall right.

They've offered us to spend the night.

Go ahead.

What do you aim to do?

I'm all right.

John Grady stood watching him. Well, he said. Suit yourself. Blevins didnt answer and he left him sitting there.

The room they slept in was at the back of the house and it smelled of hay or straw. It was small and there was no window to it and on the floor were two pallets of straw and sacking with serapes over them. They took the lamp the host handed them and thanked him and he bowed out the low doorway and bid them goodnight. He didnt ask about Blevins.

John Grady set the lamp on the floor and they sat in the straw ticks and took off their boots.

I'm give out, said Rawlins.

I hear you.

What all did the old man say about work in this part of the country?

He says there's some big ranches yon side of the Sierra del Carmen. About three hundred kilometers.

How far's that?

Hundred and sixty, hundred and seventy miles.

You reckon he thinks we're desperados?

I dont know. Pretty nice about it if he does.

I'd say so.

He made that country sound like the Big Rock Candy Mountains. Said there was lakes and runnin water and grass to the stirrups. I cant picture country like that down here from what I've seen so far, can you?

He's probably just tryin to get us to move on.

Could be, said John Grady. He took off his hat and lay back and pulled the serape over him.

What the hell's he goin to do, said Rawlins. Sleep out in the yard?

I reckon.

Maybe he'll be gone in the mornin.

Maybe.

He closed his eyes. Dont let that lamp burn out, he said. It'll black the whole house.

I'll blow it out here in a minute.

He lay listening. There was no sound anywhere. What are you doin? he said.

Nothin.

He opened his eyes. He looked over at Rawlins. Rawlins had his billfold spread out across the blanket.

What are you doin?

I want you to look at my goddamned drivers license.

You wont need em down here.

There's my poolhall card. Got it too.

Go to sleep.

Look at this shit. He shot Betty Ward right between the eyes.

What was she doin in there? I didnt know you liked her.

She give me that picture. That was her schooldays picture.

In the morning they ate a huge breakfast of eggs and beans and tortillas at the same table. No one went out to get Blevins and no one asked about him. The woman packed them a lunch in a cloth and they thanked her and shook hands with the man and walked out in the cool morning. Blevins' horse was not in the corral.

You think we're this lucky? said Rawlins.

John Grady shook his head doubtfully.

They saddled the horses and they offered to pay the man for their feed but he frowned and waved them away and they shook hands again and he wished them a good voyage and they mounted up and rode out down the rutted track south. A dog followed them out a ways and then stood watching after them.

The morning was fresh and cool and there was woodsmoke in the air. When they topped the first rise in the road Rawlins spat in disgust. Look yonder, he said.

Blevins was sitting the big bay horse sideways in the road.

They slowed the horses. What the hell do you reckon is wrong with him? said Rawlins.

He's just a kid.

Shit, said Rawlins.

When they rode up Blevins smiled at them. He was chewing tobacco and he leaned and spat and wiped his mouth with the underside of his wrist.

What are you grinnin at?

Mornin, said Blevins.

Where'd you get the tobacco at? said Rawlins.

Man give it to me.

Man give it to you?

Yeah. Where you all been?

They rode their horses past him either side and he fell in behind.

You all got anything to eat? he said.

Got some lunch she put up for us, said Rawlins.

What have you got?

Dont know. Aint looked.

Well why dont we take a look?

Does it look like lunchtime to you?

Joe, tell him to let me have somethin to eat.

His name aint Joe, said Rawlins. And even if it was Evelyn he aint goin to give you no lunch at no seven oclock in the mornin.

Shit, said Blevins.

They rode till noon and past noon. There was nothing along the road save the country it traversed and there was nothing in the country at all. The only sound was the steady clop of the horses along the road and the periodic spat of Blevins' tobacco juice behind them. Rawlins rode with one leg crossed in front of him, leaning on his knee and smoking pensively as he studied the country.

I believe I see cottonwoods yonder, he said.

I believe I do too, said John Grady.

They ate lunch under the trees at the edge of a small ciénaga. The horses stood in the marshy grass and sucked quietly at the water. She'd tied the food up in a square of muslin and they spread the cloth on the ground and selected from among the quesadillas and tacos and bizcochos like picnickers, leaning back on their elbows in the shade with their boots crossed before them, chewing idly and observing the horses.

Back in the old days, said Blevins, this'd be just the place where Comanches'd lay for you and bushwhack you.

I hope they had some cards or a checkerboard with em while they was waitin, said Rawlins. It dont look to me like there's been nobody down this road in a year.

Back in the old days you had a lot more travelers, said Blevins.

Rawlins eyed balefully that cauterized terrain. What in the putrefied dogshit would you know about the old days? he said.

You all want any more of this? said John Grady.

I'm full as a tick.

He tied up the cloth and stood and began to strip out of his clothes and he walked out naked through the grass past the horses and waded out into the water and sat in it to his waist. He spread his arms and lay backward into the water and disappeared. The horses watched him. He sat up out of the water and pushed his hair back and wiped his eyes. Then he just sat.

They camped that night in the floor of a wash just off the road and built a fire and sat in the sand and stared into the embers.

Blevins are you a cowboy? said Rawlins.

I like it.

Everbodv likes it.

I dont claim to be no top hand. I can ride.

Yeah? said Rawlins.

That man yonder can ride, said Blevins. He nodded across the fire toward John Grady.

What makes you say that?

He just can, that's all.

Suppose I was to tell you he just took it up. Suppose I was to tell you he's never been on a horse a girl couldnt ride.

I'd have to say you was pullin my leg.

Suppose I was to tell you he's the best I ever saw.

Blevins spat into the fire.

You doubt that?

No, I dont doubt it. Depends on who you seen ride.

I seen Booger Red ride, said Rawlins.

Yeah, said Blevins.

Yeah.

You think he can outride him?

I know for a fact he can.

Maybe he can and maybe he caint.

You dont know shit from applebutter, said Rawlins. Booger Red's been dead forever.

Dont pay no attention to him, said John Grady.

Rawlins recrossed his boots and nodded toward John Grady. He cant take my part of it without braggin on hisself, can he?

He's full of shit, said John Grady.

You hear that? said Rawlins.

Blevins leaned his chin toward the fire and spat. I dont see how you can say somebody is just flat out the best.

You cant, said John Grady. He's just ignorant, that's all.

There's a lot of good riders, said Blevins.

That's right, said Rawlins. There's a lot of good riders. But there's just one that's the best. And he happens to be settin right yonder.

Leave him alone, said John Grady.

I aint botherin him, said Rawlins. Am I botherin you?

No.

Tell Joe yonder I aint botherin you.

I said you wasnt.

Leave him alone, said John Grady.

DAYS TO COME they rode through the mountains and they crossed at a barren windgap and sat the horses among the rocks and looked out over the country to the south where the last shadows were running over the land before the wind and the sun to the west lay blood red among the shelving clouds and the distant cordilleras ranged down the terminals of the sky to fade from pale to pale of blue and then to nothing at all.

Where do you reckon that paradise is at? said Rawlins.

John Grady had taken off his hat to let the wind cool his head. You cant tell what's in a country like that till you're down there in it, he said.

There's damn sure a bunch of it, aint there.

John Grady nodded. That's what I'm here for.

I hear you, cousin.

They rode down through the cooling blue shadowland of the north slope. Evergreen ash growing in the rocky draws. Persimmon, mountain gum. A hawk set forth below them and circled in the deepening haze and dropped and they kicked their feet out of the stirrups and put the horses forward with care down the shaly rock switchbacks. At just dark they benched out on a gravel shelf and made their camp and that night they heard what they'd none heard before, three long howls to the southwest and all afterwards a silence.

You hear that? said Rawlins.

Yeah.

It's a wolf, aint it?

Yeah.

He lay on his back in his blankets and looked out where the quartermoon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains. In that false blue dawn the Pleiades seemed to be rising up into the darkness above the world and dragging all the stars away, the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net. He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.

It was cold in the night and in the dawn before daylight when they woke Blevins was already up and had a fire going on the ground and was huddled over it in his thin clothes. John Grady crawled out and got his boots and jacket on and walked out to study the new country as it shaped itself out of the darkness below them.

They drank the last of the coffee and ate cold tortillas with a thin stripe of bottled hotsauce down the middle.

How far down the road you think this'll get us? said Rawlins. I aint worried, said John Grady.

Your pardner yonder looks a little misgive.

He aint got a lot of bacon to spare.

You aint neither.

They watched the sun rise below them. The horses standing out on the bench grazing raised their heads and watched it. Rawlins drank the last of his coffee and shook out his cup and reached in his shirtpocket for his tobacco.

You think there'll be a day when the sun wont rise?

Yeah, said John Grady. Judgment day.

When you think that'll be?

Whenever He decides to hold it.

Judgment day, said Rawlins. You believe in all that?

I dont know. Yeah, I reckon. You?

Rawlins put the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and lit it and flipped away the match. I dont know. Maybe.

I knowed you was a infidel, said Blevins.

You dont know a goddamned thing, said Rawlins. Just be quiet and dont make no bigger ass of yourself than what you already are.

John Grady got up and walked over and picked up his saddle by the horn and threw his blanket over his shoulder and turned and looked at them. Let's go, he said.

They were down out of the mountains by midmorning and riding on a great plain grown with sideoats grama and basketgrass and dotted with lechugilla. Here they encountered the first riders they'd seen and they halted and watched while they approached on the plain a mile away, three men on horses leading a train of packanimals carrying empty kiacks.

What do you reckon they are? said Rawlins.

We ought not to be stopped like this, said Blevins. If we can see them they can see us.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? said Rawlins.

What would you think if you seen them stop?

He's right, said John Grady. Let's keep ridin.

They were zacateros headed into the mountains to gather chino grass. If they were surprised to see Americans horseback in that country they gave no sign. They asked them if they'd seen a brother to one of them who was in the mountains with his wife and two grown girls but they'd seen no one. The Mexicans sat their horses and took in their outfits with slow movements of their dark eyes. They themselves were a rough lot, dressed half in rags, their hats marbled with grease and sweat, their boots mended with raw cowhide. They rode old squareskirted saddles with the wood worn through the leather and they rolled cigarettes in strips of cornhusks and lit them with esclarajos of flint and steel and bits of fluff in an empty cartridge case. One of them carried an old worn Colt stuck in his belt with the gate flipped open to keep it from sliding through and they smelled of smoke and tallow and sweat and they looked as wild and strange as the country they were in.

Son de Tejas? they said.

Sí, said John Grady.

They nodded.

John Grady smoked and watched them. For all their shabbiness they were well mounted and he watched those black eyes to see could he tell what they thought but he could tell nothing. They spoke of the country and of the weather in the country and they said that it was yet cold in the mountains. No one offered to dismount. They looked out over the terrain as if it were a problem to them. Something they'd not quite decided about. The little mules entrained behind them had dropped asleep standing almost as soon as they'd halted.

The leader finished his cigarette and let fall the stub of it into the track. Bueno, he said. Vámonos.

He nodded at the Americans. Buena suerte, he said. He put the long rowels of his spurs to the horse and they moved on. The mules passed on behind them eyeing the horses in the road and switching their tails although there seemed to be no flies in that country at all.

In the afternoon they watered the horses at a clear stream running out of the southwest. They walked the creek and drank and filled and stoppered their canteens. There were antelope out on the plain perhaps two miles distant, all standing with their heads up.

They rode on. There was good grass in the level floor of the valley and cattle the color of housecats to tortoiseshell and calico moved off constantly before them up through the buckthorn or stood along the low rise of ancient ground running down to the east to watch them as they passed along the road. That night they camped in the low hills and they cooked a jackrabbit that Blevins had shot with his pistol. He fielddressed it with his pocketknife and buried it in the sandy ground with the skin on and built the fire over it. He said it was the way the Indians did.

You ever eat a jackrabbit? said Rawlins.

He shook his head. Not yet, he said.

You better rustle some more wood if you aim to eat thisn. It'll cook.

What's the strangest thing you ever ate?

Strangest thing I ever ate, said Blevins. I guess I'd have to say that would be a oyster.

A mountain oyster or a real oyster?

A real oyster.

How were they cooked?

They wasnt cooked. They just laid there in their shells. You put hotsauce on em.

You ate that?

I did.

How'd it taste?

About like you'd expect.

They sat watching the fire.

Where you from, Blevins? said Rawlins.

Blevins looked at Rawlins and looked back into the fire. Uvalde County, he said. Up on the Sabinal River.

What'd you run off for?

What'd you?

I'm seventeen years old. I can go wherever I want.

So can I.

John Grady was sitting with his legs crossed in front of him leaning against his saddle and smoking a cigarette. You've run off before, aint you? he said.

Yeah.

What'd they do, catch you?

Yeah. I was settin pins in a bowfin alley in Ardmore Oklahoma and I got dogbit by a bulldog took a chunk out of my leg the size of a Sunday roast and it got infected and the man I worked for carried me down to the doctor and they thought I had rabies or somethin and all hell busted loose and I got shipped back to Uvalde County.

What were you doin in Ardmore Oklahoma?

Settin pins in a bowlin alley.

How come you wound up there?

There was a show was supposed to come through Uvalde, town of Uvalde, and I'd saved up to go see it but they never showed up because the man that run the show got thowed in jail in Tyler Texas for havin a dirty show. Had this striptease that was part of the deal. I got down there and it said on the poster they was goin to be in Ardmore Oklahoma in two weeks and that's how come me to be in Ardmore Oklahoma.

You went all the way to Oklahoma to see a show?

That's what I'd saved up to do and I meant to do it.

Did you see the show in Ardmore?

N0. They never showed up there neither.

Blevins hauled up one leg of his overalls and turned his leg to the firelight.

Yonder's where that son of a bitch bit me, he said. I'd as soon been bit by a alligator.

What made you set out for Mexico? said Rawlins.

Same reason as you.

What reason is that?

Cause you knowed they'd play hell sowed in oats findin your ass down here.

There aint nobody huntin me.

Blevins rolled down the leg of his overalls and poked at the fire with a stick. I told that son of a bitch I wouldnt take a whippin off of him and I didnt.

Your daddy?

My daddy never come back from the war.

Your stepdaddy?

Yeah.

Rawlins leaned forward and spat into the fire. You didnt shoot him did you?

I would of. He knowed it too.

What was a bulldog doin in a bowlin alley?

I didnt get bit in the bowfin alley. I was workin in the bowfin alley, that's all.

What were you doin that you got dogbit?

Nothin. I wasnt doin nothin.

Rawlins leaned and spat into the fire. Where were you at at the time?

You got a awful lot of goddamned questions. And dont be spittin in the fire where I got supper cookin.

What? said Rawlins.

I said dont be spittin in the fire where I got supper cookin.

Rawlins looked at John Grady. John Grady had started to laugh. He looked at Blevins. Supper? he said. You'll think supper when you try and eat that stringy son of a bitch.

Blevins nodded. You let me know if you dont want your share, he said.

What they dredged smoking out of the ground looked like some desiccated effigy from a tomb. Blevins put it on a flat rock and peeled away the hide and scraped the meat off the bones into their plates and they soaked it down with hotsauce and rolled it in the last of the tortillas. They chewed and watched one another.

Well, said Rawlins. It aint all that bad.

No it aint, said Blevins. Truth is, I didnt know you could eat one at all.

John Grady stopped chewing and looked at them. Then he went on chewing again. You all been out here longer than me, he said. I thought we all started together.

The following day on the track south they began to encounter small ragged caravans of migrant traders headed toward the northern border. Brown and weathered men with burros three or four in tandem atotter with loads of candelilla or furs or goathides or coils of handmade rope fashioned out of lechugilla or the fermented drink called sotol decanted into drums and cans and strapped onto packframes made from treelimbs. They carried water in the skins of hogs or in canvas bags made waterproof with candelilla wax and fitted with cowhorn spigots and some had women and children with them and they would shoulder the packanimals off into the brush and relinquish the road to the caballeros and the riders would wish them a good day and they would smile and nod until they passed.

They tried to buy water from the caravans but they had no coin among them small enough with which to do so. When Rawlins offered a man fifty centavos for the half pennysworth of water it would take to fill their canteens the man would have no part of it. By evening they'd bought a canteenful of sotol and were passing it back and forth among themselves as they rode and soon they were quite drunk. Rawlins drank and swung up the cap by its thong and screwed it down and took the canteen by its strap and turned to swing it to Blevins. Then he caught it back. Blevins' horse was plodding along behind with an empty saddle. Rawlins eyed the animal stupidly and pulled his horse up and called to John Grady riding ahead.

John Grady turned and sat looking.

Where's he at?

Who knows? Layin back yonder somewheres I reckon.

They rode back, Rawlins leading the riderless horse by the bridlereins. Blevins was sitting in the middle of the road. He still had his hat on. Whoo, he said when he saw them. I'm drunkern shit.

They sat their horses and looked down at him.

Can you ride or not? said Rawlins.

Does a bear shit in the woods? Hell yes I can ride. I was ridin when I fell off.

He stood uncertainly and peered about. He reeled past them and felt his way among the horses. Flank and flew, Rawlins' knee. Thought you all had done rode off and left me, he said.

Next time we will leave your skinny ass.

John Grady reached and took the reins and held the horse while Blevins lurched aboard. Let me have them reins, said Blevins. I'm a goddamned buckaroo is what I am.

John Grady shook his head. Blevins dropped the reins and reached to get them and almost slid off down the horse's shoulder. He saved himself and sat up with the reins and pulled the horse around sharply. Certified goddamn broncpeeler, what I mean, he said.

He dug his heels in under the horse and it squatted and went forward and Blevins fell backwards into the road. Rawlins spat in disgust. Just leave the son of a bitch lay there, he said.

Get on the goddamned horse, said John Grady, and quit assin around.

By early evening all the sky to the north had darkened and the spare terrain they trod had turned a neuter gray as far as eye could see. They grouped in the road at the top of a rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world.

It's fixin to come a goodn, said Rawlins.

I caint be out in this, said Blevins.

Rawlins laughed and shook his head. Listen at this, he said. Where do you think you're goin to go? said John Grady.

I dont know. But I got to get somewheres.

Why cant you be out in it?

On account of the lightnin.

Lightnin?

Yeah.

Damn if you dont look about halfway sober all of a sudden, said Rawlins.

You afraid of lightnin? said John Grady.

I'll be struck sure as the world.

Rawlins nodded at the canteen hung by its strap from the pommel of John Grady's saddle. Dont give him no more of that shit. He's comin down with the DT's.

It runs in the family, said Blevins. My grandaddy was killed in a minebucket in West Virginia it run down in the hole a hunnerd and eighty feet to get him it couldnt even wait for him to get to the top. They had to wet down the bucket to cool it fore they could get him out of it, him and two other men. It fried em like bacon. My daddy's older brother was blowed out of a derrick in the Batson Field in the year nineteen and four, cable rig with a wood derrick but the lightnin got him anyways and him not nineteen year old. Great uncle on my mother's side-mother's side, I said-got killed on a horse and it never singed a hair on that horse and it killed him graveyard dead they had to cut his belt off him where it welded the buckle shut and I got a cousin aint but four years oldern me was struck down in his own yard comin from the barn and it paralyzed him all down one side and melted the fillins in his teeth and soldered his jaw shut.

I told you, said Rawlins. He's gone completely dipshit.

They didnt know what was wrong with him. He'd just twitch and mumble and point at his mouth like.

That's a out and out lie or I never heard one, said Rawlins.

Blevins didnt hear. Beads of sweat stood on his forehead. Another cousin on my daddy's side it got him it set his hair on fire. The change in his pocket burned through and fell out on the ground and set the grass alight. I done been struck twice how come me to be deaf in this one ear. I'm double bred for death by fire. You got to get away from anything metal at all. You dont know what'll get you. Brads in your overalls. Nails in your boots.

Well what do you intend to do?

He looked wildly toward the north. Try and outride it, he said. Only chance I got.

Rawlins looked at John Grady. He leaned and spat. Well, he said. If there was any doubt before I guess that ought to clear it up.

You cant outride a thunderstorm, said John Grady. What the hell is wrong with you?

It's the only chance I got.

He'd no sooner said it than the first thin crack of thunder reached them no louder than a dry stick trod on. Blevins took off his hat and passed the sleeve of his shirt across his forehead and doubled the reins in his fist and took one last desperate look behind him and whacked the horse across the rump with the hat.

They watched him go. He tried to get his hat on and then lost it. It rolled in the road. He went on with his elbows flapping and he grew small on the plain before them and more ludicrous yet.

I aint talon no responsibility for him, said Rawlins. He reached and unhooked the canteen from John Grady's saddlehorn and put his horse forward. He'll be a layin in the road down here and where do you reckon that horse'll be?

He rode on, drinking and talking to himself. I'll tell you where that horse'll be, he called back.

John Grady followed. Dust blew from under the tread of the horses and twisted away down the road before them.

Run plumb out of the country, called Rawlins. That's where. Gone to hell come Friday. That's where the goddamn horse'll be.

They rode on. There were spits of rain in the wind. Blevins' hat lay in the road and Rawlins tried to ride his horse over it but the horse stepped around it. John Grady slid one boot out of the stirrup and leaned down and picked up the hat without dismounting. They could hear the rain coming down the road behind them like some phantom migration.

Blevins' horse was standing saddled by the side of the road tied to a clump of willows. Rawlins turned and sat his horse in the rain and looked at John Grady. John Grady rode through the willows and down the arroyo following the occasional bare footprint in the rainspotted loam until he came upon Blevins crouched under the roots of a dead cottonwood in a caveout where the arrow turned and fanned out onto the plain. He was naked save for an outsized pair of stained undershorts.

What the hell are you doin? said John Grady.

Blevins sat gripping his thin white shoulders in either hand. Just settin here, he said.

John Grady looked out over the plain where the last remnants of sunlight were being driven toward the low hills to the south. He leaned and dropped Blevins' hat at his feet.

Where's your clothes at?

I took em off.

I know that. Where are they?

I left em up yonder. Shirt had brass snaps too.

If this rain hits hard there'll be a river come down through here like a train. You thought about that?

You aint never been struck by lightnin, said Blevins. You dont know what it's like.

You'll get drowned settin there.

That's all right. I aint never been drowned before.

You aim to just set there?

That's what I aim to do.

John Grady put his hands on his knees. Well, he said. I'll say no more.

A long rolling crack of thunder went pealing down the sky to the north. The ground shuddered. Blevins put his arms over his head and John Grady turned the horse and rode back up the arroyo. Great pellets of rain were cratering the wet sand underfoot. He looked back once at Blevins. Blevins sat as before. A thing all but inexplicable in that landscape.

Where's he at? said Rawlins.

He's just settin out there. You better get your slicker.

I knowed when I first seen him the son of a bitch had a loose wingnut, said Rawlins. It was writ all over him.

The rain was coming down in sheets. Blevins' horse stood in the downpour like the ghost of a horse. They left the road and followed the wash up toward a stand of trees and took shelter under the barest overhang of rock, sitting with their knees stuck out into the rain and holding the standing horses by the bridlereins. The horses stepped and shook their heads and the lightning cracked and the wind tore through the acacia and paloverde and the rain went slashing down the country. They heard a horse running somewhere out in the rain and then they just heard the rain.

You know what that was dont you? said Rawlins.

Yeah.

You want a drink of this?

I dont think so. I think it's beginnin to make me feel bad. Rawlins nodded and drank. I think it is me too, he said.

By dark the storm had slacked and the rain had almost ceased. They pulled the wet saddles off the horses and hobbled them and walked off in separate directions through the chaparral to stand spraddlelegged clutching their knees and vomiting. The browsing horses jerked their heads up. It was no sound they'd ever heard before. In the gray twilight those retchings seemed to echo like the calls of some rude provisional species loosed upon that waste. Something imperfect and malformed lodged in the heart of being. A thing smirking deep in the eyes of grace itself like a gorgon in an autumn pool.

In the morning they caught up the horses and saddled them and tied on the damp bedrolls and led the horses out to the road.

What do you want to do? said Rawlins.

I reckon we better go find his skinny ass.

What if we just went on.

John Grady mounted up and looked down at Rawlins. I dont believe I can leave him out here afoot, he said.

Rawlins nodded. Yeah, he said. I guess not.

He rode down the arroyo and encountered Blevins coming up in the same condition in which he'd left him. He sat the horse. Blevins was picking his way barefoot along the wash, carrying one boot. He looked up at John Grady.

Where's your clothes at? said John Grady.

Washed away.

Your horse is gone.

I know it. I done been out to the road once.

What do you aim to do?

I dont know.

You dont look like the demon rum's dealt kindly with you. My head feels like a fat lady's sat on it.

John Grady looked out at the morning desert shining in the new sun. He looked at the boy.

You've wore Rawlins completely out. I reckon you know that.

You never know when you'll be in need of them you've despised, said Blevins.

Where the hell'd you hear that at?

I dont know. I just decided to say it.

John Grady shook his head. He reached and unbuckled his saddlebag and took out his spare shirt and pitched it down to Blevins.

Put that on before you get parboiled out here. I'll ride down and see if I can see your clothes anywheres.

I appreciate it, said Blevins.

He rode down the wash and he rode back. Blevins was sitting in the sand in the shirt.

How much water was in this wash last night?

A bunch.

Where'd you find the one boot at?

In a tree.

He rode down the wash and out over the gravel fan and sat looking. He didnt see any boot. When he came back Blevins was sitting as he'd left him.

That boot's gone, he said.

I figured as much.

John Grady reached down a hand. Let's go.

He swung Blevins in his underwear up onto the horse behind him. Rawlins will pitch a pure hissy when he sees you, he said.

Rawlins when he saw him seemed too dismayed to speak.

He's lost his clothes, said John Grady.

Rawlins turned his horse and set off slowly down the road. They followed. No one spoke. After a while John Grady heard something drop into the road and he looked back and saw Blevins' boot lying there. He turned and looked at Blevins but Blevins was peering steadily ahead from under the brim of his hat and they rode on. The horses stepped archly among the shadows that fell over the road, the bracken steamed. Bye and bye they passed a stand of roadside cholla against which small birds had been driven by the storm and there impaled. Gray nameless birds espaliered in attitudes of stillborn flight or hanging loosely in their feathers. Some of them were still alive and they twisted on their spines as the horses passed and raised their heads and cried out but the horsemen rode on. The sun rose up in the sky and the country took on new color, green fire in the acacia and paloverde and green in the roadside run-off grass and fire in the ocotillo. As if the rain were electric, had grounded circuits that the electric might be.

So mounted they rode at noon into a waxcamp pitched in the broken footlands beneath the low stone mesa running east and west before them. There was a small clearwater branch here and the Mexicans had dug an open firebox and lined it with rock and scotched their boiler into the bank over it. The boiler was made from the lower half of a galvanized watertank and to bring it to this location they'd run a wooden axleshaft through the bottom and made a wooden spider whereby to bed the axle in the open end and with a team of horses rolled the tank across the desert from Zaragoza eighty miles to the east. The track of flattened chaparral was still visible bending away over the floor of the desert. When the Americans rode into their camp there were several burros standing there that had just been brought down from the mesa loaded with the candelilla plant they boiled for wax and the Mexicans had left the animals to stand while they ate their dinner. A dozen men dressed most of them in what looked to be pajamas and all of them in rags squatting under the shade of some willows and eating with tin spoons off of clay plates. They looked up but they did not stop eating.

Buenos días, said John Grady. They responded in a quick dull chorus. He dismounted and they looked at the spot where he stood and looked at each other and then went on eating.

Tienen algo que comer?

One or two of them gestured toward the fire with their spoons. When Blevins slid from the horse they looked at each other again.

The riders got their plates and utensils out of the saddlebags and John Grady got the little enameled pot out of the blackened cookbag and handed it to Blevins together with his old woodenhandled kitchen fork. They went to the fire and filled their plates with beans and Chile and took each a couple of blackened corn tortillas from a piece of sheetiron laid over the fire and walked over and sat under the willows a little apart from the workers. Blevins sat with his bare legs stretched out before him but they looked so white and exposed lying there on the ground that he seemed ashamed and he tried to tuck them up under him and to cover his knees with the tails of the borrowed shirt he wore. They ate. The workers had for the most part finished their meal and they were leaning back smoking cigarettes and belching quietly.

You goin to ask em about my horse? said Blevins.

John Grady chewed thoughtfully. Well, he said. If it's here they ought to be able to figure out it belongs to us.

You think they'd steal it?

You aint never goin to get that horse back, said Rawlins. We hit a town down here somewheres you better see if you can trade that pistol for some clothes and a bus ticket back to wherever it is you come from. If there are buses. Your buddy yonder might be willin to haul your ass all over Mexico but I damn sure aint.

I aint got the pistol, said Blevins. It's with the horse.

Shit, said Rawlins.

Blevins ate. After a while he looked up. What'd I ever do to you? he said.

You aint done nothin to me. And you aint goin to. That's the point.

Leave him be, Lacey. It aint goin to hurt us to try and help the boy get his horse back.

I'm just tellin him the facts, said Rawlins.

He knows the facts.

He dont act like it.

John Grady wiped his plate with the last of the tortilla and ate the tortilla and set the plate on the ground and commenced to roll a cigarette.

I'm goddamned starved, said Rawlins. You reckon they'd care if we went back for seconds?

They wont care, said Blevins. Go ahead.

Who asked you? said Rawlins.

John Grady started to reach in his pocket for a match and then he rose and walked over to the workers and squatted and asked for a light. Two of them produced esclarajos from their clothes and one struck him a light and he leaned and lit the cigarette and nodded. He asked about the boiler and the loads of candelilla still tied on the burros and the workers told them about the wax and one of them rose and walked off and came back with a small gray cake of it and handed it to him. It looked like a bar of laundrysoap. He scraped it with his fingernail and sniffed it. He held it up and looked at it.

Qué vale? he said.

They shrugged.

Es mucho trabajo, he said.

Bastante.

A thin man in a stained leather vest with embroidery on the front was watching John Grady with narrowed and speculative eyes. John Grady handed back the wax and this man hissed at him and jerked his head.

John Grady turned.

Es su hermano, el rubio?

He meant Blevins. John Grady shook his head. No, he said. Quíen es? said the man.

He looked across the clearing. The cook had given Blevins some lard and he sat rubbing it into his sunburned legs.

Up muchacho, no más, he said.

Algún parentesco?

No.

Un amigo.

John Grady drew on the cigarette and tapped the ash against the heel of his boot. Nada, he said.

No one spoke. The man in the vest studied John Grady and he looked across the clearing at Blevins. Then he asked John Grady if he wished to sell the boy.

He didnt answer for a moment. The man may have thought he was weighing the matter. They waited. He looked up. No, he said.

Qué vale? said the man.

John Grady stubbed out the cigarette against the sole of his boot and rose.

Gracias por su hospitalidad, he said.

The man offered that he would trade for him in wax. The others had turned to listen to him. Now they turned and looked at John Grady.

John Grady studied them. They did not look evil but it was no comfort to him. He turned and crossed the clearing toward the standing horses. Blevins and Rawlins rose.

What did they say? said Blevins.

Nothing.

Did you ask them about my horse?

No.

Why not?

They dont have your horse.

What was that guy talkin about?

Nothing. Get the plates. Let's go.

Rawlins looked across the clearing at the seated men. He took up the trailing reins and swung up into the saddle.

What's happened, bud? he said.

John Grady mounted and turned the horse. He looked back at the men and he looked at Blevins. Blevins stood with the plates.

What was he lookin at me for? he said.

Put them in the bag and get your ass up here.

They aint washed.

Do like I told you.

Some of the men had risen. Blevins stuffed the plates into the bag and John Grady reached down and swung him up onto the horse behind him.

He pulled the horse around and they rode out of the camp and into the road south. Rawlins looked back and put his horse into a trot and John Grady came up and they rode side by side down the narrow rutted track. No one spoke. When they were clear of the camp a mile or so Blevins asked what it was that the man in the vest had wanted but John Grady didnt answer. When Blevins asked again Rawlins looked back at him.

He wanted to buy you, he said. That's what he wanted.

John Grady didnt look at Blevins.

They rode on in silence.

What did you go and tell him that for? said John Grady. There wasnt no call to do that.

They camped that night in the low range of hills under the Sierra de la Encantada and the three of them sat about the fire in silence. The boy's bony legs were pale in the firelight and coated with road dust and bits of chaff that had stuck to the lard. The drawers he wore were baggy and dirty and he did indeed look like some sad and ill used serf or worse. John Grady parceled out to him the bottom blanket from his bedroll and he wrapped himself in it and lay by the fire and was soon asleep. Rawlins shook his head and spat.

Goddamn pitiful, he said. You thought any more about what I said?

Yeah, said John Grady. I thought about it.

Rawlins stared long into the red heart of the fire. I'll tell you somethin, he said.

Tell me.

Somethin bad is goin to happen.

John Grady smoked slowly, his arms around his updrawn knees.

This is just a jackpot, said Rawlins. What this is.

At noon the next day they rode into the pueblo of Encantada at the foot of the low range of pollarded mountains they'd been skirting and the first thing they saw was Blevins' pistol sticking out of the back pocket of a man bent over into the engine compartment of a Dodge car. John Grady saw it first and he could have named things he'd rather have seen.

Yonder's my goddamn pistol, sang out Blevins.

John Grady reached behind and grabbed him by the shirt or he'd have slid down from the horse.

Hold on, idjit, he said.

Hold on hell, said Blevins.

What do you think you're goin to do?

Rawlins had put his horse alongside of them. Keep ridin, he hissed. Good God almighty.

Some children were watching from a doorway and Blevins was looking back over his shoulder.

If that horse is here, said Rawlins, they wont have to send for Dick Tracy to figure out who it belongs to.

What do you want to do?

I dont know. Get off the damn street. May be too late anyways. I say we stash him in a safe place somewheres till we can look around.

Does that suit you, Blevins?

It dont make a damn if it suits him or not, said Rawlins. He dont have a say in it. Not if he wants my help he dont.

He rode past them and they turned off down a clay gully that passed for a street. Quit lookin back, damn it, said John Grady.

They left him with a canteen of water in the shade of some cottonwoods and told him to stay out of sight and then they rode slowly back through the town. They were picking their way along one of those rutted gullies of which the town was composed when they saw the horse looking out of the sashless window of an abandoned mud house.

Keep ridin, said Rawlins.

John Grady nodded.

When they got back to the cottonwoods Blevins was gone. Rawlins sat looking over the barren dusty countryside. He reached in his pocket for his tobacco.

I'm goin to tell you somethin, cousin.

John Grady leaned and spat. All right.

Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I'd made before it. You understand what I'm sayin?

Yeah. I think so. Meanin what?

Meanin this is it. This is our last chance. Right now. This is the time and there wont be another time and I guarantee it.

Meanin just leave him?

Yessir.

What if it was you?

It aint me.

What if it was?

Rawlins twisted the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and plucked a match from his pocket and popped it alight with his thumbnail. He looked at John Grady.

I wouldnt leave you and you wouldnt leave me. That aint no argument.

You realize the fix he's in?

Yeah. I realize it. It's the one he's put hisself in.

They sat. Rawlins smoked. John Grady crossed his hands on the pommel of his saddle and sat looking at them. After a while he raised his head.

I cant do it, he said.

Okay.

What does that mean?

It means okay. If you cant you cant. I think I knew what you'd say anyways.

Yeah, well. I didnt.

They unsaddled and staked out the horses and lay in the dry leaves under the cottonwoods and after a while they slept. When they woke it was almost dark. The boy was squatting there watching them.

It's a good thing I aint a rogue, he said. I could of slipped up on you all and carried off everthing you own.

Rawlins turned and looked at him from under his hat and turned back. John Grady sat up.

What did you all find out, said Blevins.

Your horse is here.

Did you see him?

Yeah.

What about the saddle?

We didnt see no saddle.

I aint leavin here till I get all my stuff.

There you go, said Rawlins. Listen at that.

What's he say? said Blevins.

Never mind, y said John Grady.

If it was his stuff it'd be different I bet. Then he'd be for gettin it back, wouldnt he?

Dont egg it on.

Listen, shit-for-brains, said Rawlins. If it wasnt for this man I wouldnt be here at all. I'd of left your ass back up in that arroyo. No, I take that back. I'd of left you up on the Pecos.

We'll try and get your horse back, said John Grady. If that wont satisfy you then you let me know right now.

Blevins stared at the ground.

He dont give a shit, said Rawlins. I could of wrote it down. Get shot dead for horsestealin it dont mean a damn thing to him. He expects it.

It aint stealin, said Blevins. It's my horse.

A lot of ice that'll cut. You tell this man what you intend to do cause I guarantee you I dont give a big rat's ass.

All right, said Blevins.

John Grady studied him. We get you your horse you'll be ready to ride.

Yeah.

We got your word on that?

Word's ass, said Rawlins.

Yeah, said Blevins.

John Grady looked at Rawlins. Rawlins lay under his hat. He turned back to Blevins. All right, he said.

He got up and got his bedroll and came back and handed Blevins a blanket.

We goin to sleep now? said Blevins.

I am.

Did you all eat?

Yeah, said Rawlins. Sure we ate. Wouldnt you of? We eat a big steak apiece and split a third one.

Damn, said Blevins.

They slept until the moon was down and they sat in the dark and smoked. John Grady watched the stars.

What time you make it to be, bud? said Rawlins.

First quarter moon sets at midnight where I come from.

Rawlins smoked. Hell. I believe I'll go back to bed.

Go ahead. I'll wake you.

All right.

Blevins went to sleep as well. He sat watching the firmament unscroll up from behind the blackened palisades of the mountains to the east. Toward the village all was darkness. Not even a dog barked. He looked at Rawlins rolled asleep in his soogan and he knew that he was right in all he'd said and there was no help for it and the dipper standing at the northern edge of the world turned and the night was a long time passing.

When he called them out it was not much more than an hour till daylight.

You ready? said Rawlins.

Ready as I'm liable to get.

They saddled the horses and John Grady handed his stakerope to Blevins. You can make a hackamore out of that, he said.

All right.

Keep it under your shirt, said Rawlins. Dont let nobody see it.

There aint nobody to see it, said Blevins.

Dont bet on it. I see a light up yonder already.

Let's go, said John Grady.

There were no houselamps lit in the street where they'd seen the horse. They rode along slowly. A dog that had been sleeping in the dirt rose up and commenced barking and Rawlins made a throwing motion at it and it slunk off. When they got to the house where the horse was stabled John Grady got down and walked over and looked in the window and came back.

He aint here, he said.

It was dead quiet in the little mud street. Rawlins leaned and spat. Well, shit, he said.

You all sure this is the place? said Blevins.

It's the place.

The boy slid from the horse and picked his way gingerly with his bare feet across the road to the house and looked in. Then he climbed through the window.

What the hell's he doin? said Rawlins.

You got me.

They waited. He didnt come back.

Yonder comes somebody.

Some dogs started up. John Grady mounted up and turned the horse and went back up the road and sat the horse in the dark. Rawlins followed. Dogs were beginning to bark all back through the town. A light came on.

This is by God it, aint it? said Rawlins.

John Grady looked at him. He was sitting with the carbine upright on his thigh. From beyond the buildings and the din of dogs there came a shout.

You know what these sons of bitches'll do to us? said Rawlins. You thought about that?

John Grady leaned forward and spoke to the horse and put his hand on the horse's shoulder. The horse had begun to step nervously and it was not a nervous horse. He looked toward the houses where they'd seen the light. A horse whinnied in the dark.

That crazy son of a bitch, said Rawlins. That crazy son of a bitch.

All out bedlam had broken across the lot. Rawlins pulled his horse around and the horse stamped and trotted and he whacked it across the rump with the barrel of the gun. The horse squatted and dug in with its hind hooves and Blevins in his underwear atop the big bay horse and attended by a close retinue of howling dogs exploded into the road in a shower of debris from the rotted ocotillo fence he'd put the horse through.

The horse skittered past Rawlins sideways, Blevins clinging to the animal's mane and snatching at his hat. The dogs swarmed wildly over the road and Rawlins' horse stood and twisted and shook its head and the big bay turned a complete circle and there were three pistol shots from somewhere in the dark all evenly spaced that went pop pop pop. John Grady put the heels of his boots to his horse and leaned low in the saddle and he and Rawlins went pounding up the road. Blevins passed them both, his pale knees clutching the horse and his shirttail flying.

Before they reached the turn at the top of the hill there were three more shots from the road behind them. They turned onto the main track south and went pounding through the town. Already there were lamps lit in a few small windows. They passed through at a hard gallop and rode up into the low hills. First light was shaping out the country to the east. A mile south of the town they caught up with Blevins. He'd turned his horse in the road and he was watching them and watching the road behind them.

Hold up, he said. Let's listen.

They tried to quiet the gasping animals. You son of a bitch, said Rawlins.

Blevins didnt answer. He slid from his horse and lay in the road listening. Then he got up and pulled himself back up onto the horse.

Boys, he said, they're a comin.

Horses?

Yeah. I'll tell you right now straight out there aint no way you all can keep up with me. Let me take the road since it's me they're huntin. They'll follow the dust and you all can slip off into the country. I'll see you down the road.

Before they could agree or disagree he'd hauled the horse around by the hackamore and was pounding off up the track.

He's right, said John Grady. We better get off this damned road.

All right.

They rode out through the brush in the dark, taking the lowest country they could keep to, lying along the necks of their mounts that they not be skylighted.

We're fixin to get the horses snakebit sure as the world, said Rawlins.

It'll be daylight soon.

Then we can get shot.

In a little while they heard horses on the road. Then they heard more horses. Then all was quiet.

We better get somewheres, said Rawlins. It's fixin to get daylight sure enough.

Yeah, I know it.

You think when they come back they'll see where we quit the road?

Not if enough of em has rode over it.

What if they catch him?

John Grady didnt answer.

He wouldnt have no qualms about showin em which way we'd headed.

Probably not.

You know not. All they'd have to do would be look at him crossways.

Then we better keep ridin.

Well I dont know about you but I'm about to run out of horse.

Well tell me what you want to do.

Shit, said Rawlins. We aint got no choice. We'll see what daylight brings. Maybe one of these days we might find some grain somewheres in this country.

Maybe.

They slowed the horses and rode to the crest of the ridge. Nothing moved in all that gray landscape. They dismounted and walked out along the ridge. Small birds were beginning to call from the chaparral.

You know how long it's been since we eat? said Rawlins.

I aint even thought about it.

I aint either till just now. Bein shot at will sure enough cause you to lose your appetite, wont it?

Hold up a minute.

What is it?

Hold up.

They stood listening.

I dont hear nothin.

There's riders out there.

On the road?

I dont know.

Can you see anything?

No.

Let's keep movin.

John Grady spat and stood listening. Then they moved on. At daylight they left the horses standing in a gravel wash and climbed to the top of a rise and sat among the ocotillos and watched the country back to the northeast. Some deer moved out feeding along the ridge opposite. Other than that they saw nothing.

Can you see the road? said Rawlins.

No.

They sat. Rawlins stood the rifle against his knee and took his tobacco from his pocket. I believe I'll smoke, he said.

A long fan of light ran out from the east and the rising sun swelled blood red along the horizon.

Look yonder, said John Grady.

What.

Over yonder.

Two miles away riders had crested a rise. One, two. A third. Then they dropped from sight again.

Which way are they headed?

Well cousin I dont know for sure but I got a pretty good notion.

Rawlins sat holding the cigarette. We're goin to die in this goddamned country, he said.

No we aint.

You think they can track us on this ground?

I dont know. I dont know that they cant.

I'll tell you what, bud. They get us bayed up out here somewheres with the horses give out they're goin to have to come over the barrel of this rifle.

John Grady looked at him and he looked back out where the riders had been. I'd hate to have to shoot my way back to Texas, he said.

Where's your gun at?

In the saddlebag.

Rawlins lit the cigarette. I ever see that little son of a bitch again I'll kill him myself. I'm damned if I wont.

Let's go, said John Grady. They still got a lot of ground to cover. I'd rather to make a good run as a bad stand.

They rode out west with the sun at their back and their shadows horse and rider falling before them tall as trees. The country they found themselves in was old lava country and they kept to the edge of the rolling black gravel plain and kept watch behind them. They saw the riders again, south of where they would have put them. And then once more.

If them horses aint bottomed out I believe they'd be comin harder than that, said Rawlins.

I do too.

Midmorning they rode to the crest of a low volcanic ridge and turned the horses and sat watching.

What do you think? said Rawlins.

Well, they know we aint got the horse. That's for sure. They might not be as anxious to ride this ground as you and me.

You got that right.

They sat for a long time. Nothing moved.

I think they've quit us.

I do too.

Let's keep movin.

By late afternoon the horses were stumbling. They watered them out of their hats and drank the other canteen dry themselves and mounted again and rode on. They saw the riders no more. Toward evening they came upon a band of sheepherders camped on the far side of a deep arroyo that was floored with round white rocks. The sheepherders seemed to have selected the site with an eye to its defense ás did the ancients of that country and they watched with great solemnity the riders making their way along the other side.

What do you think? said John Grady.

I think we ought to keep ridin. I'm kindly soured on the citizens in this part of the country.

I think you're right.

They rode on another mile and descended into the arroyo to look for water. They found none. They dismounted and led the horses, the four of them stumbling along into the deepening darkness, Rawlins still carrying the rifle, following the senseless tracks of birds or wild pigs in the sand.

Nightfall found them sitting on their blankets on the ground with the horses staked a few feet away. Just sitting in the dark with no fire, not speaking. After a while Rawlins said: We should of got water from them herders.

We'll find some water in the mornin.

I wish it was mornin.

John Grady didnt answer.

Goddamn junior is goin to piss and moan and carry on all night. I know how he gets.

They probably think we've gone crazy.

Aint we?

You think they caught him?

I dont know.

I'm goin to turn in.

They lay in their blankets on the ground. The horses shifted uneasily in the dark.

I'll say one thing about him, said Rawlins.

Who?

Blevins.

What's that?

The little son of a bitch wouldnt stand still for nobody highjackin his horse.

In the morning they left the horses in the arroyo and climbed up to watch the sun rise and see what the country afforded. It had been cold in the night in the sink and when the sun came up they turned and sat with their backs to it. To the north a thin spire of smoke stood in the windless air.

You reckon that's the sheepcamp? said Rawlins.

We better hope it is.

You want to ride back up there and see if they'll give us some water and some grub?

No.

I dont either.

They watched the country.

Rawlins rose and walked off with the rifle. After a while he came back with some nopal fruit in his hat and poured them out on a flat rock and sat peeling them with his knife.

You want some of these? he said.

John Grady walked over and squatted and got out his own knife. The nopal was still cool from the night and it stained their fingers blood red and they sat peeling the fruit and eating it and spitting the small hard seeds and picking the spines out of their fingers. Rawlins gestured at the countryside. There aint much happenin out there, is there?

John Grady nodded. Biggest problem we got is we could run into them people and not even know it. We never even got a good look at their horses.

Rawlins spat. They got the same problem. They dont know us neither.

They'd know us.

Yeah, said Rawlins. You got a point.

Course we aint got no problem at all next to Blevins. He'd about as well to paint that horse red and go around blowin a horn.

Aint that the truth.

Rawlins wiped the blade of his knife on his trousers and folded it shut. I believe I'm losin ground with these things.

Peculiar thing is, what he says is true. It is his horse.

Well it's somebody's horse.

It damn sure dont belong to them Mexicans.

Yeah. Well he's got no way to prove it.

Rawlins put the knife in his pocket and sat inspecting his hat for nopal stickers. A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.

Where'd you hear that at?

I dont know.

John Grady folded away his knife. Well, he said. There's a lot of country out there.

Yep. Lot of country.

God knows where he's got to.

Rawlins nodded. I'll tell you what you told me.

What's that?

We aint seen the last of his skinny ass.

They rode all day upon the broad plain to the south. It was noon before they found water, a silty residue in the floor of an adobe tank. In the evening passing through a saddle in the low hills they jumped a spikehorn buck out of a stand of juniper and Rawlins shucked the rifle backward out of the bootleg scabbard and raised and cocked it and fired. He'd let go the reins and the horse bowed up and hopped sideways and stood trembling and he stepped down and ran to the spot where he'd seen the little buck and it lay dead in its blood on the ground. John Grady rode up leading Rawlins' horse. The buck was shot through the base of the skull and its eyes were just glazing. Rawlins ejected the spent shell and levered in a fresh round and lowered the hammer with his thumb and looked up.

That was a hell of a shot, said John Grady.

That was blind dumb-ass luck is what that was. I just raised up and shot.

Still a hell of a shot.

Let me have your beltknife. If we dont founder on deermeat I'm a chinaman.

They dressed out the deer and hung it in the junipers to cool and they made a foray on the slope for wood. They built a fire and they cut paloverde poles and cut forked uprights to lay them in and Rawlins skinned the buck out and sliced the meat in strips and draped it over the poles to smoke. When the fire had burned down he skewered the backstraps on two greenwood sticks and propped the sticks with rocks over the coals. Then they sat watching the meat brown and sniffed the smoke where fat dropped hissing in the coals.

John Grady walked out and unsaddled the horses and hobbled them and turned them out and came back with his blanket and saddle.

Here you go, he said.

What's that?

Salt.

I wish we had some bread.

How about some fresh corn and potatoes and apple cobbler?

Dont be a ass.

Aint them things done yet?

No. Set down. They wont never get done with you standin there thataway.

They ate the tenderloins one apiece and turned the strips of meat on the poles and lay back and rolled cigarettes.

I've seen them vaqueros worked for Blair cut a yearling heifer so thin you could see through the meat. They'd bone one out damn near in one long sheet. They'd hang the meat on poles all the way around the fire like laundry and if you come up on it at night you wouldnt know what it was. It was like lookin through somethin and seem its heart. They'd turn the meat and mend the fire in the night and you'd see em movin around inside it. You'd wake up in the night and this thing would be settin out there on the prairie in the wind and it would be glowin like a hot stove. Just red as blood.

This here meat's goin to taste like cedar, said John Grady. I know it.

Coyotes were yapping along the ridge to the south. Rawlins leaned and tipped the ash from his cigarette into the fire and leaned back.

You ever think about dyin?

Yeah. Some. You?

Yeah. Some. You think there's a heaven?

Yeah. Dont you?

I dont know. Yeah. Maybe. You think you can believe in heaven if you dont believe in hell?

I guess you can believe what you want to.

Rawlins nodded. You think about all the stuff that can happen to you, he said. There aint no end to it.

You fixin to get religion on us?

No. Just sometimes I wonder if I wouldnt be better off if I did.

You aint fixin to quit me are you?

I said I wouldnt.

John Grady nodded.

You think them guts might draw a lion? said Rawlins.

Could.

You ever seen one?

No. You?

Just that one dead that Julius Ramsey killed with the dogs up on Grape Creek. He climbed up in the tree and knocked it out with a stick for the dogs to fight.

You think he really done that?

Yeah. I think probably he did.

John Grady nodded. He might well could of.

The coyotes yammered and ceased and then began again.

You think God looks out for people? said Rawlins.

Yeah. I guess He does. You?

Yeah. I do. Way the world is. Somebody can wake up and sneeze somewhere in Arkansas or some damn place and before you're done there's wars and ruination and all hell. You dont know what's goin to happen. I'd say He's just about got to. I dont believe we'd make it a day otherwise.

John Grady nodded.

You dont think them sons of bitches might of caught him do you?

Blevins?

Yeah.

I dont know. I thought you was glad to get shut of him.

I dont want to see nothin bad happen to him.

I dont either.

You reckon his name is Jimmy Blevins sure enough?

Who knows.

In the night the coyotes woke them and they lay in the dark and listened to them where they convened over the carcass of the deer, fighting and squalling like cats.

I want you to listen to that damned racket, said Rawlins.

He got up and got a stick from the fire and shouted at them and threw the stick. They hushed. He mended the fire and turned the meat on the greenwood racks. By the time he was back in his blankets they were at it again.

They rode all day the day following through the hill country to the west. As they rode they cut strips of the smoked and half dried deermeat and chewed on it and their hands were black and greasy and they wiped them on the withers of the horses and passed the canteen of water back and forth between them and admired the country. There were storms to the south and masses of clouds that moved slowly along the horizon with their long dark tendrils trailing in the rain. That night they camped on a ledge of rock above the plains and watched the lightning all along the horizon provoke from the seamless dark the distant mountain ranges again and again. Crossing the plain the next morning they came upon standing water in the bajadas and they watered the horses and drank rainwater from the rocks and they climbed steadily into the deepening cool of the mountains until in the evening of that day from the crest of the cordilleras they saw below them the country of which they'd been told. The grasslands lay in a deep violet haze and to the west thin flights of waterfowl were moving north before the sunset in the deep red galleries under the cloudbanks like schoolfish in a burning sea and on the foreland plain they saw vaqueros driving cattle before them through a gauze of golden dust.

They made camp on the south slope of the mountain and spread their blankets in the dry dirt under an overhanging ledge of rock. Rawlins took horse and rope and dragged up before their camp an entire dead tree and they built a great bonfire against the cold. Out on the plain in the shoreless night they could see like a reflection of their own fire in a dark lake the fire of the vaqueros five miles away. It rained in the night and the rain hissed in the fire and the horses came in out of the darkness and stood with their red eyes shifting and blinking and in the morning it was cold and gray and the sun a long time coming.

By noon they were on the plain riding through grass of a kind they'd not seen before. The path of the driven cattle lay through the grass like a place where water had run and by midafternoon they could see the herd before them moving west and within an hour they'd caught them up.

The vaqueros knew them by the way they sat their horses and they called them caballero and exchanged smoking material with them and told them about the country. They drove the cattle on to the west fording creeks and a small river and driving pockets of antelope and whitetail deer before them out of the stands of enormous cottonwoods through which they passed and they moved on until late in the day when they came to a fence and began to drift the cattle south. There was a road on the other side of the fence and in the road were the tracks of tires and the tracks of horses from the recent rains and a young girl came riding down the road and passed them and they ceased talking. She wore english riding boots and jodhpurs and a blue twill hacking jacket and she carried a ridingcrop and the horse she rode was a black Arabian saddlehorse. She'd been riding the horse in the river or in the ciénagas because the horse was wet to its belly and the leather fenders of the saddle were dark at their lower edges and her boots as well. She wore a flatcrowned hat of black felt with a wide brim and her black hair was loose under it and fell halfway to her waist and as she rode past she turned and smiled and touched the brim of the hat with her crop and the vaqueros touched their hatbrims one by one down to the last of those who'd pretended not even to see her as she passed. Then she pushed the horse into a gaited rack and disappeared down the road.

Rawlins looked at the caporal of the vaqueros but the caporal put his horse forward and rode up the line. Rawlins fell back among the riders and alongside John Grady.

Did you see that little darlin? he said.

John Grady didnt answer. He was still looking down the road where she'd gone. There was nothing there to see but he was looking anyway.

An hour later in the failing light they were helping the vaqueros drive the cattle into a holdingpen. The gerente had ridden up from the house and he sat his horse and picked his teeth and watched the work without comment. When they were done the caporal and another vaquero took them over and introduced them namelessly and the five of them rode together back down to the gerente's house and there in the kitchen at a metal table under a bare lightbulb the gerente questioned them closely as to their understanding of ranch work while the caporal seconded their every claim and the vaquero nodded and said that it was so and the caporal volunteered testimony on his own concerning the qualifications of the güeros of which they themselves were not even aware, dismissing doubt with a sweep of his hand as if to say that these were things known to everyone. The gerente leaned back in his chair and studied them. In the end they gave their names and spelled them and the gerente put them in his book and then they rose and shook hands and walked out in the early darkness where the moon was rising and the cattle were calling and the yellow squares of windowlight gave warmth and shape to an alien world.

They unsaddled the horses and turned them into the trap and followed the caporal up to the bunkhouse. A long adobe building of two rooms with a tin roof and concrete floors. In one room a dozen bunks of wood or metal. A small sheetiron stove. In the other room a long table with benches for seats and a woodburning cookstove. An old wooden safe that held glasses and tinware. A soapstone sink with a zinc-covered sideboard. The men were already at the table eating when they entered and they went to the sideboard and got cups and plates and stood at the 'stove and helped themselves to beans and tortillas and a rich stew made from kid and then went to the table where the vaqueros nodded to them and made expansive gestures for them to be seated, eating the while with one hand.

After dinner they sat at the table and smoked and drank coffee and the vaqueros asked them many questions about America and all the questions were about horses and cattle and none about them. Some had friends or relatives who had been there but to most the country to the north was little more than a rumor. A thing for which there seemed no accounting. Someone brought a coal-oil lamp to the table and lit it and shortly thereafter the generator shut down and the lightbulbs hanging by their cords from the ceiling dimmed to a thin orange wire and winked out. They listened with great attention as John Grady answered their questions and they nodded solemnly and they were careful of their demeanor that they not be thought to have opinions on what they heard for like most men skilled at their work they were scornful of any least suggestion of knowing anything not learned at first hand.

They carried their dishes to a galvanized tub full of water and soapcurd and they carried the lamp to their bunks at the farther end of the bunkhouse and unrolled the ticks down over the rusty springs and spread their blankets and undressed and blew out the lamp. Tired as they were they lay a long time in the dark after the vaqueros were asleep. They could hear them breathing deeply in the room that smelled of horses and leather and men and they could hear in the distance the new cattle still not bedded down in the holdingpen.

I believe these are some pretty good old boys, whispered Rawlins.

Yeah, I believe they are too.

You see them old highback centerfire rigs? Yeah.

You reckon they think we're on the run down here? Aint we?

Rawlins didnt answer. After a while he said: I like hearin the cattle out there.

Yeah. I do too.

He didnt say much about Rocha, did he? Not a lot.

You reckon that was his daughter? I'd say it was.

This is some country, aint it? Yeah. It is. Go to sleep.

Bud? Yeah. This is how it was with the old waddies, aint it? Yeah.

How long do you think you'd like to stay here? About a hundred years. Go to sleep.