All the Pretty Horses

by Cormac McCarthy

  They dont know what we are.

  Dont know what we are?

  I dont think so. I dont think they've ever seen a man afoot.

  Rawlins leaned and spat.

  You see anything there you'd have?

  There's horses there.

  Where at?

  Look at that dark bay. Right yonder.

  I'm lookin.

  Look again.

  That horse wont weigh eight hundred pounds.

  Yeah he will. Look at the hindquarters on him. He'd make a cowhorse. Look at that roan yonder.

  That coonfooted son of a bitch?

  Well, yeah he is a little. All right. That other roan. That third one to the right.

  The one with the white on him?

  Yeah.

  That's kindly a funny lookin horse to me.

  No he aint. He's just colored peculiar.

  You dont think that means nothin? He's got white feet.

  That's a good horse. Look at his head. Look at the jaw on him. You got to remember their tails are all growed out.

  Yeah. Maybe. Rawlins shook his head doubtfully. You used to be awful particular about horses. Maybe you just aint seen any in a long time.

  John Grady nodded. Yeah, he said. Well. I aint forgot what they're supposed to look like.

  The horses had grouped again at the far end of the pen and stood rolling their eyes and running their heads along each other's necks.

  They got one thing goin for em, said Rawlins.

  What's that.

  They aint had no Mexican to try and break em.

  John Grady nodded.

  They studied the horses.

  How many are there? said John Grady.

  Rawlins looked them over. Fifteen. Sixteen.

  I make it sixteen.

  Sixteen then.

  You think you and me could break all of em in four days?

  Depends on what you call broke.

  Just halfway decent greenbroke horses. Say six saddles. Double and stop and stand still to be saddled.

  Rawlins took his tobacco from his pocket and pushed back his hat.

  What you got in mind? he said.

  Breakin these horses.

  Why four days?

  You think we could do it?

  They intend puttin em in the rough-string? My feelin is that any horse broke in four days is liable to come unbroke in four more.

  They're out of horses is how come em to be down here in the first place.

  Rawlins dabbed tobacco into the cupped paper. You're tellin me that what we're lookin at here is our own string?

  That's my guess.

  We're lookin at ridin some coldjawed son of a bitch broke with one of them damned mexican ringbits.

  Yeah.

  Rawlins nodded. What would you do, sideline em?

  Yep.

  You think there's that much rope on the place?

  I dont know.

  You'd be a woreout sumbuck. I'll tell you that.

  Think how good you'd sleep.

  Rawlins put the cigarette in his mouth and fished about for a match. What else do you know that you aint told me?

  Armando says the old man's got horses all over that mountain.

  How many horses.

  Somethin like four hundred head.

  Rawlins looked at him. He popped the match and lit the cigarette and flipped the match away. What in the hell for?

  He'd started a breeding program before the war.

  What kind of horses?

  Media sangres.

  What the hell is that.

  Quarterhorses, what we'd call em.

  Yeah?

  That roan yonder, said John Grady, is a flat-out Billy horse if he does have bad feet.

  Where do you reckon he come from?

  Where they all come from. Out of a horse called Jose Chiquito.

  Little Joe?

  Yeah.

  The same horse?

  The same horse.

  Rawlins smoked thoughtfully.

  Both of them horses were sold in Mexico, said John Grady. One and Two. What he's got up yonder is a big yeguada of mares out of the old Traveler-Ronda line of horses of Sheeran's.

  What else? said Rawlins.

  That's it.

  Let's go talk to the man.

  THEY STOOD in the kitchen with their hats in their hands and the gerente sat at the table and studied them.

  Amansadores, he said.

  Si.

  Ambos, he said.

  Si. Ambos.

  He leaned back. He drummed his fingers on the metal tabletop.

  Hay dieciseis caballos en el potrero, said John Grady. Podemos amansarlos en cuatro dias.

  They walked back across the yard to the bunkhouse to wash up for supper.

  What did he say? said Rawlins.

  He said we were full of shit. But in a nice way.

  Is that a flat-out no do you reckon?

  I dont think so. I dont think he can leave it at that.

  They went to work on the green colts daybreak Sunday morning, dressing in the half dark in clothes still wet from their washing them the night before and walking out to the potrero before the stars were down, eating a cold tortilla wrapped around a scoop of cold beans and no coffee and carrying their forty foot maguey catchropes coiled over their shoulders. They carried saddleblankets and a bosalea or riding hackamore with a metal noseband and John Grady carried a pair of clean gunny-sacks he'd slept on and his Hamley saddle with the stirrups already shortened.

  They stood looking at the horses. The horses shifted and stood, gray shapes in the gray morning. Stacked on the ground outside the gate were coils of every kind of rope, cotton and manilla and plaited rawhide and maguey and ixtle down to lengths of old woven hair mecates and handplaited piecings of bindertwine. Stacked against the fence were the sixteen rope hackamores they'd spent the evening tying in the bunkhouse.

  This bunch has done been culled once up on the mesa, aint it?

  I'd say so.

  What do they want with the mares?

  They ride em down here.

  Well, said Rawlins. I can see why they're hard on a horse. Puttin up with them bitches.

  He shook his head and stuffed the last of the tortilla in his jaw and wiped his hands on his trousers and undid the wire and opened the gate.

  John Grady followed him in and stood the saddle on the ground and went back out and brought in a handful of ropes and hackamores and squatted to sort them. Rawlins stood building his loop.

  I take it you dont give a particular damn what order they come in, he said.

  You take it correctly, cousin.

  You dead set on sackin these varmints out?

  Yep.

  My old daddy always said that the purpose of breakin a horse was to ride it and if you got one to break you just as well to saddle up and climb aboard and get on with it.

  John Grady grinned. Was your old daddy a certified peeler?

  I never heard him claim to be. But I damn sure seen him hang and rattle a time or two.

  Well you're fixin to see some more of it.

  We goin to bust em twice?

  What for?

  I never saw one that completely believed it the first time or ever doubted it the second.

  John Grady smiled. I'll make em believe, he said. You'll see.

  I'm goin to tell you right now, cousin. This is a heathenish bunch.

  What is it Blair says? No such thing as a mean colt?

  No such thing as a mean colt, said Rawlins.

  The horses were already moving. He took the first one that broke and rolled his loop and forefooted the colt and it hit the ground with a tremendous thump. The other horses flared and bunched and looked back wildly. Before the colt could struggle up John Grady had squatted on its neck and pulled its head up and to one side and was holding the horse by the muzzle with the long bony head pressed against his chest and the hot sweet breath of it flooding up from the dark wells of its nostrils over
his face and neck like news from another world. They did not smell like horses. They smelled like what they were, wild animals. He held the horse's face against his chest and he could feel along his inner thighs the blood pumping through the arteries and he could smell the fear and he cupped his hand over the horse's eyes and stroked them and he did not stop talking to the horse at all, speaking in a low steady voice and telling it all that he intended to do and cupping the animal's eyes and stroking the terror out.

  Rawlins took one of the lengths of siderope from around his neck where he'd hung them and made a slipnoose and hitched it around the pastern of the hind leg and drew the leg up and halfhitched it to the horse's forelegs. He freed the catchrope and pitched it away and took the hackamore and they fitted it over the horse's muzzle and ears and John Grady ran his thumb in the animal's mouth and Rawlins fitted the mouthrope and then slipinoosed a second siderope to the other rear leg. Then he tied both sideropes to the hackamore.

  You all set? he said.

  All set.

  He let go the horse's head and rose and stepped away. The horse struggled up and turned and shot out one hind foot and snatched itself around in a half circle and fell over. It got up and kicked again and fell again. When it got up the third time it stood kicking and snatching its head about in a little dance. It stood. It walked away and stood again. Then it shot out a hindleg and fell again.

  It lay there for a while thinking things over and when it got up it stood for a minute and then it hopped up and down three times and then it just stood glaring at them. Rawlins had got his catchrope and was building his loop again. The other horses watched with great interest from the far side of the potrero.

  These sumbucks are as crazy as a shithouse rat, he said.

  You pick out the one you think is craziest, said John Grady, and I'll give you a finished horse this time Sunday week.

  Finished for who?

  To your satisfaction.

  Bullshit, said Rawlins.

  By the time they had three of the horses sidelined in the trap blowing and glaring about there were several vaqueros at the gate drinking coffee in a leisurely fashion and watching the proceedings. By midmorning eight of the horses stood tied and the other eight were wilder than deer, scattering along the fence and bunching and running in a rising sea of dust as the day warmed, coming to reckon slowly with the remorselessness of this rendering of their fluid and collective selves into that condition of separate and helpless paralysis which seemed to be among them like a creeping plague. The entire complement of vaqueros had come from the bunkhouse to watch and by noon all sixteen of the mestenos were standing about in the potrero sidehobbled to their own hackamores and faced about in every direction and all communion among them broken. They looked like animals trussed up by children for fun and they stood waiting for they knew not what with the voice of the breaker still running in their brains like the voice of some god come to inhabit them.

  When they went down to the bunkhouse for dinner the vaqueros seemed to treat them with a certain deference but whether it was the deference accorded the accomplished or that accorded to mental defectives they were unsure. No one asked them their opinion of the horses or queried them as to their method. When they went back up to the trap in the afternoon there were some twenty people standing about looking at the horses--women, children, young girls and men--and all waiting for them to return.

  Where the hell did they come from? said Rawlins.

  I dont know.

  Word gets around when the circus comes to town, dont it?

  They passed nodding through the crowd and entered the trap and fastened the gate.

  You picked one out? said John Grady.

  Yeah. For pure crazy I nominate that bucketheaded son of a bitch standin right yonder.

  The grullo?

  Grullo-lookin.

  The man's a judge of horseflesh.

  He's a judge of craziness.

  He watched while John Grady walked up to the animal and tied a twelvefoot length of rope to the hackamore. Then he led it through the gate out of the potrero and into the corral where the horses would be ridden. Rawlins thought the horse would shy or try to rear but it didnt. He got the sack and hobbleropes and came up and while John Grady talked to the horse he hobbled the front legs together and then took the mecate rope and handed John Grady the sack and he held the horse while for the next quarter hour John Grady floated the sack over the animal and under it and rubbed its head with the sack and passed it across the horse's face and ran it up and down and between the animal's legs talking to the horse the while and rubbing against it and leaning against it. Then he got the saddle.

  What good do you think it does to waller all over a horse thataway? said Rawlins.

  I dont know, said John Grady. I aint a horse.

  He lifted the blanket and placed it on the animal's back and smoothed it and stood stroking the animal and talking to it and then he bent and picked up the saddle and lifted it with the cinches strapped up and the off stirrup hung over the horn and sat it on the horse's back and rocked it into place. The horse never moved. He bent and reached under and pulled up the strap and cinched it. The horse's ears went back and he talked to it and then pulled up the cinch again and he leaned against the horse and talked to it just as if it were neither crazy nor lethal. Rawlins looked toward the corral gate. There were fifty or more people watching. Folk were picnicking on the ground. Fathers held up babies. John Grady lifted off the stirrup from the saddlehorn and let it drop. Then he hauled up the cinchstrap again and buckled it. All right, he said.

  Hold him, said Rawlins.

  He held the mecate while Rawlins undid the sideropes from the hackamore and knelt and tied them to the front hobbles. Then they slipped the hackamore off the horse's head and John Grady raised the bosalea and gently fitted it over the horse's nose and fitted the mouthrope and headstall. He gathered the reins and looped them over the horse's head and nodded and Rawlins knelt and undid the hobbles and pulled the slipnooses until the siderope loops fell to the ground at the horse's rear hooves. Then he stepped away.

  John Grady put one foot in the stirrup and pressed himself flat against the horse's shoulder talking to it and then swung up into the saddle.

  The horse stood stock still. It shot out one hindfoot to test the air and stood again and then it threw itself sideways and twisted and kicked and stood snorting. John Grady touched it up in the ribs with his bootheels and it stepped forward. He reined it and it turned. Rawlins spat in disgust. John Grady turned the horse again and came back by.

  What the hell kind of a bronc is that? said Rawlins. You think that's what these people paid good money to see?

  By dark he'd ridden eleven of the sixteen horses. Not all of them so tractable. Someone had built a fire on the ground outside the potrero and there were something like a hundred people gathered, some come from the pueblo of La Vega six miles to the south, some from farther. He rode the last five horses by the light of that fire, the horses dancing, turning in the light, their red eyes flashing. When they were done the horses stood in the potrero or stepped about trailing their hackamore ropes over the ground with such circumspection not to tread upon them and snatch down their sore noses that they moved with an air of great elegance and seemliness. The wild and frantic band of mustangs that had circled the potrero that morning like marbles swirled in a jar could hardly be said to exist and the animals whinnied to one another in the dark and answered back as if some one among their number were missing, or some thing.

  When they walked down to the bunkhouse in the dark the bonfire was still burning and someone had brought a guitar and someone else a mouth-harp. Three separate strangers offered them a drink from bottles of mescal before they were clear of the crowd.

  The kitchen was empty and they got their dinner from the stove and sat at the table. Rawlins watched John Grady. He was chewing woodenly and half tottering on the bench.

  You aint tired are you, bud? he said.

 
No, said John Grady. I was tired five hours ago.

  Rawlins grinned. Dont drink no more of that coffee. It'll keep you awake.

  When they walked out in the morning at daybreak the fire was still smoldering and there were four or five men lying asleep on the ground, some with blankets and some without. Every horse in the potrero watched them come through the gate.

  You remember how they come? said Rawlins.

  Yeah. I remember em. I know you remember your buddy yonder.

  Yeah, I know the son of a bitch.

  When he walked up to the horse with the sack it turned and went trotting. He walked it down against the fence and picked up the rope and pulled it around and it stood quivering and he walked up to it and began to talk to it and then to stroke it with the sack. Rawlins went to fetch the blankets and the saddle and the bosalea.

  By ten that night he'd ridden the entire remuda of sixteen horses and Rawlins had ridden them a second time each. They rode them again Tuesday and on Wednesday morning at daybreak with the first horse saddled and the sun not up John Grady rode toward the gate.

  Open her up, he said.

  Let me saddle a catch-horse.

  We aint got time.

  If that son of a bitch sets your ass out in the stickers you'll have time.

  I guess I'd better stay in the saddle then.

  Let me saddle up one of these good horses.

  All right.

  He rode out of the trap leading Rawlins' horse and waited while Rawlins shut the gate and mounted up beside him. The green horses stepped and sidled nervously.

  This is kindly the blind leadin the blind, aint it?

  Rawlins nodded. It's sort of like old T-Bone Watts when he worked for daddy they all fussed about him havin bad breath. He told em it was bettern no breath at all.

  John Grady grinned and booted the horse forward into a trot and they set out up the road.

  Midafternoon he'd ridden all the horses again and while Rawlins worked with them in the trap he rode the little grullo of Rawlins' choice up into the country. Two miles above the ranch where the road ran by sedge and willow and wild plum along the edge of the laguna she rode past him on the black horse.

  He heard the horse behind him and would have turned to look but that he heard it change gaits. He didnt look at her until the Arabian was alongside his horse, stepping with its neck arched and one eye on the mesteno not with wariness but some faint equine disgust. She passed five feet away and turned her fineboned face and looked full at him. She had blue eyes and she nodded or perhaps she only lowered her head slightly to better see what sort of horse he rode, just the slightest tilt of the broad black hat set level on her head, the slightest lifting of the long black hair. She passed and the horse changed gaits again and she sat the horse more than well, riding erect with her broad shoulders and trotting the horse up the road. The mesteno had stopped and sulled in the road with its forefeet spread and he sat looking after her. He'd half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat. She disappeared beyond the lakeside willows. A flock of small birds rose up and passed back over him with thin calls.