All the Pretty Horses

by Cormac McCarthy

  Donde esta su caballo?

  En el segundo puesto.

  Vamonos, vamonos.

  They led him out down the bay to the saddleroom and he got his saddle and his blankets and by then Redbo was standing in the barn bay, stepping nervously. They came back past Esteban's cuarto but there was no sign that the old man was even awake. They held the light while he saddled his horse and then they walked out into the dawn where the other horses were standing. One of the guards was carrying Rawlins' rifle and Rawlins was sitting slumped in the saddle on his horse with his hands cuffed before him and the reins on the ground.

  They jabbed him forward with a rifle.

  What's this about, pardner? he said.

  Rawlins didnt answer. He leaned and spat and looked away.

  No hable, said the leader. Vamonos.

  He mounted up and they cuffed his wrists and handed him the reins and then all mounted up and they turned their horses and rode two by two out of the lot through the standing gate. When they passed the bunkhouse the lights were on and the vaqueros were standing in the door or squatting along the ramada. They watched the riders pass, the Americans behind the leader and his lieutenant, the others six in number riding in pairs behind in their caps and uniforms with their carbines resting across the pommels of their saddles, all riding out along the cienaga road and upcountry toward the north.

  HEY RODE all day, up through the low hills and into the mountains and along the mesa to the north well beyond the horse range and into the country they'd first crossed into some four months before. They nooned at a spring and squatted about the cold and blackened sticks of some former fire and ate cold beans and tortillas out of a newspaper. He thought the tortillas could have come from the hacienda kitchen. The newspaper was from Monclova. He ate slowly with his manacled hands and drank water from a tin cup that could only be partly filled for the water running out through the rivet holding the handle. The brass showed through the nickelplating where it was worn from the inside of the cuffs and his wrists had already turned a pale and poisonous green. He ate and he watched Rawlins who squatted a little ways off but Rawlins would not meet his eyes. They slept briefly on the ground under the cottonwoods and then rose and drank more water and filled the canteens and waterbottles and rode on.

  The country they traversed was advanced in season and the acacia was in bloom and there had been rain in the mountains and the grass along the selvedge of the draws was green and blowsy in the long twilight where they rode. Except for remarks concerning the countryside the guards said little among themselves and to the Americans they said nothing at all. They rode through the long red sunset and they rode on in the dark. The guards had long since scabbarded their rifles and they rode easily, half slouched in the saddle. About ten oclock they halted and made camp and built a fire. The prisoners sat in the sand among old rusted tins and bits of charcoal with their hands still manacled before them and the guards set out an old blue granite-ware coffeepot and a stewpot of the same material and they drank coffee and ate a dish containing some kind of pale and fibrous tuber, some kind of meat, some kind of fowl. All of it stringy, all of it sour.

  They spent the night with their hands chained through the stirrups of their saddles, trying to keep warm under their single blankets. They were on the trail again before the sun was up an hour and glad to be so.

  This was their life for three days. On the afternoon of the third they rode into the town of Encantada of recent memory.

  They sat side by side on a bench of iron slats in the little alameda. A pair of the guards stood a little ways off with their rifles and a dozen children of different ages stood in the dust of the street watching them. Two of the children were girls about twelve years of age and when the prisoners looked at them they turned shyly and twisted at their skirts. John Grady called to them to ask if they could get them cigarettes.

  The guards glared at him. He made smoking motions at the girls and they turned and ran off down the street. The other children stood as before.

  Ladies' man, said Rawlins.

  You dont want a cigarette?

  Rawlins spat slowly between his boots and looked up again. They aint goin to bring you no damn cigarette, he said.

  I'll bet you.

  What the hell you goin to bet with?

  I'll bet you a cigarette.

  How you goin to do that?

  I'll bet you a cigarette she brings em. If she brings em I keep yours.

  What are you goin to give me if she dont bring em?

  If she dont bring em then you get mine.

  Rawlins stared out across the alameda.

  I aint above whippin your ass, you know.

  Dont you think if we're goin to get out of this jackpot we might better start thinkin about how to get out of it together?

  You mean like we got in it?

  You dont get to go back and pick some time when the trouble started and then lay everthing off on your friend.

  Rawlins didnt answer.

  Dont sull up on me. Let's get it aired.

  All right. When they arrested you what did you say?

  I didnt say nothin. What would of been the use?

  That's right. What would of been the use.

  What does that mean?

  It means you never asked em to go wake the patron, did you?

  No.

  I did.

  What did they say?

  Rawlins leaned and spat and wiped his mouth.

  They said he was awake. They said he'd been awake for a long time. Then they laughed.

  You think he sold us down the river?

  Dont you?

  I dont know. If he did it was because of some lie.

  Or some truth.

  John Grady sat looking down at his hands.

  Would it satisfy you, he said, if I was to just go on and admit to bein a fourteen carat gold plated son of a bitch?

  I never said that.

  They sat. After a while John Grady looked up.

  I cant back up and start over. But I dont see the point in slobberin over it. And I cant see where it would make me feel better to be able to point a finger at somebody else.

  It dont make me feel better. I tried to reason with you, that's all. Tried any number of times.

  I know you did. But some things aint reasonable. Be that as it may I'm the same man you crossed that river with. How I was is how I am and all I know to do is stick. I never even promised you you wouldnt die down here. Never asked your word on it either. I dont believe in signing on just till it quits suitin you.

  You either stick or you quit and I wouldnt quit you I dont care what you done. And that's about all I got to say.

  I never quit you, Rawlins said.

  All right.

  After a while the two girls came back. The taller of them held up her hand with two cigarettes in it.

  John Grady looked at the guards. They motioned the girls over and looked at the cigarettes and nodded and the girls approached the bench and handed the cigarettes to the prisoners together with several wooden matches.

  Muy amable, said John Grady. Muchas gracias.

  They lit the cigarettes off one match and John Grady put the other matches in his pocket and looked at the girls. They smiled shyly.

  Son americanos ustedes? they said.

  Si.

  Son ladrones?

  Si. Ladrones muy famosos. Bandoleros.

  They sucked in their breath. Que precioso, they said. But the guards called to them and waved them away.

  They sat leaning forward on their elbows, smoking the cigarettes. John Grady looked at Rawlins' boots.

  Where's them new boots at? he said.

  Back at the bunkhouse.

  He nodded. They smoked. After a while the others returned and called to the guards. The guards gestured at the prisoners and they rose and nodded to the children and walked out to the street.

  They rode out through the north end of the town and they halted before an adobe building
with a corrugated tin roof and an empty mud bellcot above it. Scales of old painted plaster still clung to the mud brick walls. They dismounted and entered a large room that might once have been a schoolroom. There was a rail along the front wall and a frame that could once have held a blackboard. The floors were of narrow pine boards and the grain was etched by years of sand trod into them and the windows along both walls had missing panes of glass replaced with squares of tin all cut from the same large sign to form a broken mozaic among the windowlights. At a gray metal desk in one corner sat a stout man likewise in khaki uniform who wore about his neck a scarf of yellow silk. He regarded the prisoners without expression. He gestured slightly with his head toward the rear of the building and one of the guards took down a ring of keys from the wall and the prisoners were led out through a dusty weed yard to a small stone building with a heavy wooden door shod in iron.

  There was a square judas-hole cut into the door at eye level and fastened across it and welded to the iron framing was a mesh of lightgauge rebar. One of the guards unfastened the old brass padlock and opened the door. He took a separate ring of keys from his belt.

  Las esposas, he said.

  Rawlins held up his handcuffs. The guard undid them and he entered and John Grady followed. The door groaned and creaked and thudded shut behind them.

  There was no light in the room save what fell through the grate in the door and they stood holding their blankets waiting for their eyes to grade the darkness. The floor of the cell was concrete and the air smelled of excrement. After a while someone to the rear of the room spoke.

  Cuidado con el bote.

  Dont step in the bucket, said John Grady.

  Where is it?

  I dont know. Just dont step in it.

  I caint see a damn thing.

  Another voice spoke out of the darkness. It said: Is that you all?

  John Grady could see part of Rawlins' face broken into squares in the light from the grid. Turning slowly. The pain in his eyes. Ah God, he said.

  Blevins? said John Grady.

  Yeah. It's me.

  He made his way carefully to the rear. An outstretched leg withdrew along the floor like a serpent recoiling underfoot. He squatted and looked at Blevins. Blevins moved and he could see his teeth in the partial light. As if he were smiling.

  What a man wont see when he aint got a gun, said Blevins.

  How long have you been here?

  I dont know. A long time.

  Rawlins made his way toward the back wall and stood looking down at him. You told em to hunt us, didnt you? he said.

  Never done no such a thing, said Blevins.

  John Grady looked up at Rawlins.

  They knew there were three of us, he said.

  Yeah, said Blevins.

  Bullshit, said Rawlins. They wouldnt of hunted us once they got the horse back. He's done somethin.

  It was my goddamn horse, said Blevins.

  They could see him now. Scrawny and ragged and filthy.

  It was my horse and my saddle and my gun.

  They squatted. No one spoke.

  What have you done? said John Grady.

  Aint done nothin that nobody else wouldnt of.

  What have you done.

  You know what he's done, said Rawlins.

  Did you come back here?

  Damn right I come back here.

  You dumb shit. What did you do? Tell me the rest of it.

  Aint nothin to tell.

  Oh hell no, said Rawlins. Aint a damn thing to tell.

  John Grady turned. He looked past Rawlins. An old man sat quietly against the wall watching them.

  De que crimen queda acusado el joven? he said.

  The man blinked. Asesinato, he said.

  El ha matado un hombre?

  The man blinked again. He held up three fingers.

  What did he say? said Rawlins.

  John Grady didnt answer.

  What did he say? I know what the son of a bitch said.

  He said he's killed three men.

  That's a damn lie, said Blevins.

  Rawlins sat slowly on the concrete.

  We're dead, he said. We're dead men. I knew it'd come to this. From the time I first seen him.

  That aint goin to help us, said John Grady.

  Aint but one of em died, said Blevins.

  Rawlins raised his head and looked at him. Then he got up and stepped to the other side of the room and sat down again.

  Cuidado con el bote, said the old man.

  John Grady turned to Blevins.

  I aint done nothin to him, said Blevins.

  Tell me what happened, said John Grady.

  He'd worked for a German family in the town of Palau eighty miles to the east and at the end of two months he'd taken the money he'd earned and ridden back across the selfsame desert and staked out the horse at the selfsame spring and dressed in the common clothes of the country he'd walked into town and sat in front of the tienda for two days until he saw the same man go by with the Bisley's worn guttapercha grips sticking out of his belt.

  What did you do?

  You aint got a cigarette have you?

  No. What did you do?

  Didnt think you did.

  What did you do?

  Lord what wouldnt I give for a chew of tobacco.

  What did you do?

  I walked up behind him and snatched it out of his belt. That's what I done.

  And shot him.

  He come at me.

  Come at you.

  Yeah.

  So you shot him.

  What choice did I have?

  What choice, said John Grady.

  I didnt want to shoot the dumb son of a bitch. That was never no part of my intention.

  What did you do then?

  Time I got back to the spring where my horse was at they was on me. That boy I shot off his horse thowed down on me with a shotgun.

  What happened then?

  I didnt have no more shells. I'd shot em all up. My own damn fault. All I had was what was in the gun.

  You shot one of the rurales?

  Yeah.

  Dead?

  Yeah.

  They sat quietly in the dark.

  I could of bought shells in Munoz, said Blevins. Fore I even come here. I had the money too.

  John Grady looked at him. You got any idea the kind of mess you're in?

  Blevins didnt answer.

  What did they say they mean to do with you?

  Send me to the penitentiary I reckon.

  They aint goin to send you to the penitentiary.

  Why aint they?

  You aint goin to be that lucky, said Rawlins.

  I aint old enough to hang.

  They'll lie about your age for you.

  They dont have capital punishment in this country, said John Grady. Dont listen to him.

  You knew they was huntin us, didnt you? said Rawlins.

  Yeah, I knew it. What was I supposed to do, send you a telegram?

  John Grady waited for Rawlins to answer but he didnt. The shadow of the iron grid over the judas-hole lay skewed upon the far wall like a waiting chalkgame which the space in that dark and stinking cubicle had somehow rendered out of true. He folded his blanket and sat on it and leaned against the wall.

  Do they ever let you out? Do you get to walk around?

  I dont know.

  What do you mean you dont know?

  I caint walk.

  You cant walk?

  That's what I said.

  How come you caint walk, said Rawlins.

  Cause they busted my feet all to hell is how come.

  They sat. No one spoke. Soon it was dark. The old man on the other side of the room had begun to snore. They could hear sounds from the distant village. Dogs. A mother calling. Ranchero music with its falsetto cries almost like an agony played out of a cheap radio somewhere in the nameless night.

  THAT NIGHT he dreamt of horses in a field on a high
plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wild-flowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses and they coursed the young mares and fillies over the plain where their rich bay and their rich chestnut colors shone in the sun and the young colts ran with their dams and trampled down the flowers in a haze of pollen that hung in the sun like powdered gold and they ran he and the horses out along the high mesas where the ground resounded under their running hooves and they flowed and changed and ran and their manes and tails blew off of them like spume and there was nothing else at all in that high world and they moved all of them in a resonance that was like a music among them and they were none of them afraid horse nor colt nor mare and they ran in that resonance which is the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised.

  In the morning two guards came and opened the door and handcuffed Rawlins and led him away. John Grady stood and asked where they were taking him but they didnt answer. Rawlins didnt even look back.

  The captain was sitting at his desk drinking coffee and reading a three day old newspaper from Monterrey. He looked up. Pasaporte, he said.

  I dont have no passport, said Rawlins.

  The captain looked at him. He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. Dont have no passport, he said. You have identification?

  Rawlins reached around to his left rear pocket with his manacled hands. He could reach the pocket but he couldnt reach into it. The captain nodded and one of the guards stepped forward and took out the billfold and handed it across to the captain. The captain leaned back in the chair. Quite las esposas, he said.

  The guard swung his keys forward and took hold of Rawlins' wrists and unlocked the handcuffs and stepped back and put them in his belt. Rawlins stood rubbing his wrists. The captain turned the sweatblackened leather in his hand. He looked at both sides of it and he looked up at Rawlins. Then he opened it and took out the card and he took out the photograph of Betty Ward and he took out the american money and then the mexican peso bills which alone were unmutilated. He spread these things out on the desk and leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together and tapped his chin with his forefingers and looked at Rawlins again. Outside Rawlins could hear a goat. He could hear children. The captain made a little rotary motion with one finger. Turn around, he said.

  He did so.

  Put down your pants.

  Do what?

  Put down your pants.