Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West (Vintage International)

by Cormac McCarthy

  When Glanton turned to go back down the hall there were four or five horses standing in it. He slapped them away with his hat and went to the door and looked out at the silent mob of spectators.

  Mozos de cuadra, he called. Venga. Pronto.

  Two boys pushed through and approached the door and a number of others followed. Glanton motioned the tallest of them forward and placed one hand on top of his head and turned him around and looked at the others.

  Este hombre es el jefe, he said. The jefe stood solemnly, his eyes cutting about. Glanton turned his head around and looked at him.

  Te encargo todo, entiendes? Caballos, sillas, todo.

  Sí. Entiendo.

  Bueno. Andale. Hay caballos en la casa.

  The jefe turned and shouted out the names of his friends and half a dozen came forward and they entered the house. When Glanton went down the hall they were leading those animals—known mankillers some—toward the door, scolding them, the least of the boys hardly taller than the legs of the animal he’d taken in charge. Glanton went out to the back of the building and looked about for the expriest whom it pleased him to send for whores and drink but he could not be found. In trying to arrive at a detail which might reasonably be expected to return at all he settled on Doc Irving and Shelby and gave them a fistful of coins and returned to the kitchen again.

  By dark there were a half dozen young goats roasting on spits in the yard behind the hostel, their blackened figures shining in the smoky light. The judge strolled the grounds in his linen suit and directed the chefs with a wave of his cigar and he in turn was followed by a string band of six musicians, all of them old, all serious, who stayed with him at every turn some three paces to the rear and playing the while. A skin of pulque hung from a tripod in the center of the yard and Irving had returned with between twenty and thirty whores of every age and size and there were deployed before the door of the building whole trains of wagons and carts overseen by impromptu sutlers crying out each his bill of particulars and surrounded by a shifting gallery of townspeople and dozens of halfbroken horses for trade that reared and whinnied and desolatelooking cattle and sheep and pigs together with their owners until the town that Glanton and the judge had hoped to lay clear of was almost entirely at their door in a carnival underwritten with that mood of festivity and growing ugliness common to gatherings in that quarter of the world. The bonfire in the courtyard had been stoked to such heights that from the street the entire rear of the premises appeared to be in flames and new merchants with their goods and new spectators were arriving regularly together with sullen groups of Yaqui indians in loincloths who would be hired for their labor.

  By midnight there were fires in the street and dancing and drunkenness and the house rang with the shrill cries of the whores and rival packs of dogs had infiltrated the now partly darkened and smoking yard in the back where a vicious dogfight broke out over the charred racks of goatbones and where the first gunfire of the night erupted and wounded dogs howled and dragged themselves about until Glanton himself went out and killed them with his knife, a lurid scene in the flickering light, the wounded dogs silent save for the pop of their teeth, dragging themselves across the lot like seals or other things and crouching under the walls while Glanton walked them down and clove their skulls with the huge copperbacked beltknife. He was no more than back inside the house before new dogs were muttering at the spits.

  By the small hours of the morning most of the lamps within the hostel had smoked out and the rooms were filled with drunken snoring. The sutlers and their carts were gone and the blackened rings of the burnedout fires lay in the road like bomb-craters, the smoldering billets dragged forth to sustain the one last fire about which sat old men and boys smoking and exchanging tales. As the mountains to the east began to shape themselves out of the dawn these figures too drifted away. In the yard at the rear of the premises the surviving dogs had dragged the bones about everywhere and the dead dogs lay in dark shingles of their own blood dried in the dust and cocks had begun to crow. When the judge and Glanton appeared at the front door in their suits, the judge in white and Glanton in black, the only person about was one of the small hostlers asleep on the steps.

  Joven, said the judge.

  The boy leaped up.

  Eres mozo del caballado?

  Sí señor. A su servicio.

  Nuestros caballos, he said. He would describe the animals but the boy was already on the run.

  It was cold and a wind was blowing. The sun not up. The judge stood at the steps and Glanton walked up and down studying the ground. In ten minutes the boy and another appeared leading the two horses saddled and groomed at a nice trot up the street, the boys at a dead run, barefoot, the breath of the horses pluming and their heads turning smartly from side to side.

  XV

  A new contract – Sloat – The massacre on the Nacozari – Encounter with Elias – Pursued north – A lottery – Shelby and the kid – A horse lamed – A norther – An ambush – Escape – War on the plains – A descent – The burning tree – On the track – The trophies – The kid rejoins his command – The judge – A desert sacrifice – The scouts do not return – The ogdoad – Santa Cruz – The militia – Snow – A hospice – The stable.

  On the fifth of December they rode out north in the cold darkness before daybreak carrying with them a contract signed by the governor of the state of Sonora for the furnishing of Apache scalps. The streets were silent and empty. Carroll and Sanford had defected from the company and with them now rode a boy named Sloat who had been left sick to die in this place by one of the gold trains bound for the coast weeks earlier. When Glanton asked him if he were kin to the commodore of that name the boy spat quietly and said No, nor him to me. He rode near the head of the column and he must have counted himself well out of that place yet if he gave thanks to any god at all it was ill timed for the country was not done with him.

  They rode north onto the broad Sonoran desert and in that cauterized waste they wandered aimlessly for weeks pursuing rumor and shadow. A few small scattered bands of Chiricahua raiders supposedly seen by herdsmen on some squalid and desolate ranch. A few peons waylaid and slain. Two weeks out they massacred a pueblo on the Nacozari River and two days later as they rode toward Ures with the scalps they encountered a party of armed Sonoran cavalry on the plains west of Baviácora under General Elias. A running fight ensued in which three of Glanton’s party were killed and another seven wounded, four of whom could not ride.

  That night they could see the fires of the army less than ten miles to the south. They sat out the night in darkness and the wounded called for water and in the cold stillness before dawn the fires out there were still burning. At sunrise the Delawares rode into the camp and sat on the ground with Glanton and Brown and the judge. In the eastern light the fires on the plain faded like an evil dream and the country lay bare and sparkling in the pure air. Elias was moving upon them out there with over five hundred troops.

  They rose and began to saddle the horses. Glanton fetched down a quiver made from ocelot skin and counted out the arrows in it so that there was one for each man and he tore a piece of red flannel into strips and tied these about the footings of four of the shafts and then replaced the counted arrows into the quiver.

  He sat on the ground with the quiver upright between his knees while the company filed past. When the kid selected among the shafts to draw one he saw the judge watching him and he paused. He looked at Glanton. He let go the arrow he’d chosen and sorted out another and drew that one. It carried the red tassel. He looked at the judge again and the judge was not watching and he moved on and took his place with Tate and Webster. They were joined finally by a man named Harlan from Texas who had drawn the last arrow and the four of them stood together while the rest saddled their horses and led them out.

  Of the wounded men two were Delawares and one a Mexican. The fourth was Dick Shelby and he alone sat watching the preparations for departure. The Delawares remaining in
the company conferred among themselves and one of them approached the four Americans and studied them each in turn. He walked past them and turned and came back and took the arrow from Webster. Webster looked at Glanton where he stood with his horse. Then the Delaware took Harlan’s arrow. Glanton turned and with his forehead against the ribs of his horse he tightened the girthstraps and then mounted up. He adjusted his hat. No one spoke. Harlan and Webster went to get their animals. Glanton sat his horse while the company filed past and then he turned and followed them out onto the plain.

  The Delaware had gone for his horse and he brought it up still hobbled through the wallowed places in the sand where the men had slept. Of the wounded indians one was silent, breathing heavily with his eyes closed. The other was chanting rhythmically. The Delaware let drop the reins and took down his warclub from his bag and stepped astraddle of the man and swung the club and crushed his skull with a single blow. The man humped up in a little shuddering spasm and then lay still. The other was dispatched in the same way and then the Delaware raised the horse’s leg and undid the hobble and slid it clear and rose and put the hobble and the club in the bag and mounted up and turned the horse. He looked at the two men standing there. His face and chest were freckled with blood. He touched up the horse with his heels and rode out.

  Tate squatted in the sand, his hands dangling in front of him. He turned and looked at the kid.

  Who gets the Mexican? he said.

  The kid didnt answer. They looked at Shelby. He was watching them.

  Tate had a clutch of small pebbles in his hand and he let them drop one by one into the sand. He looked at the kid.

  Go on if you want to, the kid said.

  He looked at the Delawares dead in their blankets. You might not do it, he said.

  That aint your worry.

  Glanton might come back.

  He might.

  Tate looked over to where the Mexican was lying and he looked at the kid again. I’m still held to it, he said.

  The kid didnt answer.

  You know what they’ll do to them?

  The kid spat. I can guess, he said.

  No you caint.

  I said you could go. You do what you want.

  Tate rose and looked to the south but the desert there lay in all its clarity uninhabited by any approaching armies. He shrugged up his shoulders in the cold. Injins, he said. It dont mean nothin to them. He crossed the campground and brought his horse around and led it up and mounted it. He looked at the Mexican, wheezing softly, a pink froth on his lips. He looked at the kid and then he nudged the pony up through the scraggly acacia and was gone.

  The kid sat in the sand and stared off to the south. The Mexican was shot through the lungs and would die anyway but Shelby had had his hip shattered by a ball and he was clear in his head. He lay watching the kid. He was from a prominent Kentucky family and had attended Transylvania College and like many another young man of his class he’d gone west because of a woman. He watched the kid and he watched the enormous sun where it sat boiling on the edge of the desert. Any roadagent or gambler would have known that the first to speak would lose but Shelby had already lost it all.

  Why dont you just get on with it? he said.

  The kid looked at him.

  If I had a gun I’d shoot you, Shelby said.

  The kid didnt answer.

  You know that, dont you?

  You aint got a gun, the kid said.

  He looked to the south again. Something moving, perhaps the first lines of heat. No dust in the morning so early. When he looked at Shelby again Shelby was crying.

  You wont thank me if I let you off, he said.

  Do it then you son of a bitch.

  The kid sat. A light wind was blowing out of the north and some doves had begun to call in the thicket of greasewood behind them.

  If you want me just to leave you I will.

  Shelby didnt answer.

  He pushed a furrow in the sand with the heel of his boot. You’ll have to say.

  Will you leave me a gun?

  You know I caint leave you no gun.

  You’re no better than him. Are you?

  The kid didnt answer.

  What if he comes back.

  Glanton.

  Yes.

  What if he does.

  He’ll kill me.

  You wont be out nothin.

  You son of a bitch.

  The kid rose.

  Will you hide me?

  Hide you?

  Yes.

  The kid spat. You caint hide. Where you goin to hide at?

  Will he come back?

  I dont know.

  This is a terrible place to die in.

  Where’s a good one?

  Shelby wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. Can you see them? he said.

  Not yet.

  Will you pull me up under that bush?

  The kid turned and looked at him. He looked off downcountry again and then he crossed the basin and squatted behind Shelby and took him up under the arms and raised him. Shelby’s head rolled back and he looked up and then he snatched at the butt of the pistol stuck in the kid’s belt. The kid seized his arm. He let him down and stepped away and turned him loose. When he returned through the basin leading the horse the man was crying again. He took the pistol from his belt and jammed it among his belongings lashed to the cantle and took his canteen down and went to him.

  He had his face turned away. The kid filled his flask from his own and reseated the stopper where it hung by its thong and drove it home with the heel of his hand. Then he rose and looked off to the south.

  Yonder they come, he said.

  Shelby raised up on one elbow.

  The kid looked at him and he looked at the faint and formless articulation along the horizon to the south. Shelby lay back. He was staring up at the sky. A dark overcast was moving down from the north and the wind was up. A clutch of leaves scuttled out of the willow bracken at the edge of the sand and then scuttled back again. The kid crossed to where the horse stood waiting and took the pistol and stuck it in his belt and hung the canteen over the saddlehorn and mounted up and looked back at the wounded man. Then he rode out.

  He was trotting north on the plain when he saw another horseman on the grounds before him perhaps a mile distant. He could not make him out and he rode more slowly. After a while he saw that the rider was leading the horse and after a while he could see that the horse was not walking right.

  It was Tate. He sat by the wayside watching the kid as he rode up. The horse stood on three legs. Tate said nothing. He took off his hat and looked inside it and put it on again. The kid was turned in the saddle and he was looking to the south. Then he looked at Tate.

  Can he walk?

  Not much.

  He got down and drew up the horse’s leg. The frog of the hoof was split and bloody and the animal’s shoulder quivered. He let the hoof down. The sun was about two hours high and now there was dust on the horizon. He looked at Tate.

  What do you want to do?

  I dont know. Lead him awhile. See how he does.

  He aint goin to do.

  I know it.

  We could ride and tie.

  You might just keep ridin.

  I might anyway.

  Tate looked at him. Go on if you want, he said.

  The kid spat. Come on, he said.

  I hate to leave the saddle. Hate to leave the horse far as that goes.

  The kid picked up the trailing reins of his own animal. You might change your mind about what you hate to leave, he said.

  They set out leading both horses. The damaged animal kept wanting to stop. Tate coaxed it along. Come on fool, he said. You aint goin to like them niggers a bit more than me.

  By noon the sun was a pale blur overhead and a cold wind was blowing out of the north. They leaned into it man and animal. The wind bore stinging bits of grit and they set their hats low over their faces and pushed on. Dried desert chaff passed
along with the seething migrant sands. Another hour and there was no track visible from the main party of riders before them. The sky lay gray and of a piece in every direction as far as they could see and the wind did not abate. After a while it began to snow.

  The kid had taken down his blanket and wrapped himself in it. He turned and stood with his back to the wind and the horse leaned and laid its cheek against his. Its eyelashes were thatched with snow. When Tate came up he stopped and they stood looking out downwind where the snow was blowing. They could see no more than a few feet.

  Aint this hell, he said.

  Will your horse lead?

  Hell no. I caint hardly make him foller.

  We get turned around we might just run plumb into the Spaniards.

  I never seen it turn so cold so quick.

  What do you want to do.

  We better go on.

  We could pull for the high country. As long as we keep goin uphill we’ll know we aint got in a circle.

  We’ll get cut off. We never will find Glanton.

  We’re cut off now.

  Tate turned and stared bleakly to where the whirling flakes blew down from the north. Let’s go, he said. We caint stand here.

  They led the horses on. Already the ground was white. They took turns riding the good horse and leading the lame. They climbed for hours up a long rocky wash and the snow did not diminish. They began to come upon piñon and dwarf oak and open parkland and the snow on those high meadows was soon a foot deep and the horses were blowing and smoking like steam-engines and it was colder and growing dark.

  They were rolled in their blankets asleep in the snow when the scouts from Elias’s forward company came upon them. They’d ridden all night the only track there was, pushing on not to lose the march of those shallow pans as they filled with snow. They were five men and they came up through the evergreens in the dark and all but stumbled upon the sleepers, two mounds in the snow one of which broke open and up out of which a figure sat suddenly like some terrible hatching.