Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

by Cormac McCarthy

  The others of the company hardly turned to advise themselves of what had occurred. Every man of them was firing point blank at the muleteers. They fell from their mounts and lay in the trail or slid from the escarpment and vanished. The drivers below got their animals turned and were attempting to flee back down the trail and the laden packmules were beginning to clamber white-eyed at the sheer wall of the bluff like enormous rats. The riders pushed between them and the rock and methodically rode them from the escarpment, the animals dropping silently as martyrs, turning sedately in the empty air and exploding on the rocks below in startling bursts of blood and silver as the flasks broke open and the mercury loomed wobbling in the air in great sheets and lobes and small trembling satellites and all its forms grouping below and racing in the stone arroyos like the imbreachment of some ultimate alchemic work decocted from out the secret dark of the earth's heart, the fleeing stag of the ancients fugitive on the mountainside and bright and quick in the dry path of the storm channels and shaping out the sockets in the rock and hurrying from ledge to ledge down the slope shimmering and deft as eels.

  The muleteers benched out in a swag on the trail where the precipice was almost negotiable and they rode and fell crashing down through the scrub juniper and pine in a confusion of cries while the horsemen herded the lag mules off after them and rode wildly down the rock trail like men themselves at the mercy of something terrible. Carroll and Sanford had become detached from the company and when they reached the bench where the last of the arrieros had disappeared they reined their horses and looked back up the trail. It was empty save for a few dead men from the conducta. Half a hundred mules had been ridden off the escarpment and in the curve of the bluff they could see the broken shapes of the animals strewn down the rocks and they could see the bright shapes of the quicksilver pooled in the evening light. The horses stamped and arched their necks. The riders looked off down into that calamitous gulf and they looked at each other but they required no conference and they pulled the mouths of the horses about and roweled them on down the mountain.

  They caught up with the company at dusk. They were dismounted at the far side of a river and the kid and one of the Delawares were hazing the lathered horses back from the edge of the water. They put their animals to the ford and crossed, the water up under the horses' bellies and the horses picking their way over the rocks and glancing wildly upstream where a cataract thundered out of the darkening forest into the flecked and seething pool below. When they rode up out of the ford the judge stepped forward and took Carroll's horse by the jaw.

  Where's the nigger? he said.

  He looked at the judge. They were all but at eyelevel and he on horseback. I dont know, he said.

  The judge looked at Glanton. Glanton spat.

  How many men did you see in the square?

  I didnt have time to take no headcount. There was three or four shot that I know of.

  But not the nigger?

  I never saw him.

  Sanford pushed his horse forward. There was no nigger in the square, he said. I seen them shoot them boys and they were ever one white as you and me.

  The judge turned loose Carroll's horse and went to get his own animal. Two of the Delawares detached themselves from the company. When they rode out up the trail it was almost dark and the company had pulled back into the woods and posted videttes at the ford and they made no fire.

  No riders came down the trail. The early part of the night was dark but the first relief at the ford saw it begin to clear and the moon came out over the canyon and they saw a bear come down and pause at the far side of the river and test the air with his nose and turn back. About daybreak the judge and the Delawares returned. They had the black with them. He was naked save for a blanket he'd wrapped himself in. He didnt even have boots. He was riding one of the bonetailed packmules from the conducta and he was shivering with cold. The only thing he'd saved was his pistol. He was holding it against his chest under the blanket for he had no other place to carry it.

  The way down out of the mountains toward the western sea led them through green gorges thick with vines where paroquets and gaudy macaws leered and croaked. The trail followed a river and the river was up and muddy and there were many fords and they crossed and recrossed the river continually. Pale cascades hung down the sheer mountain wall above them, blowing off of the high slick rock in wild vapors. In eight days they passed no other riders. On the ninth they saw an old man trying to get off the trail below them, caning a pair of burros through the woods. As they came abreast of this spot they halted and Glanton turned into the woods where the wet leaves were shuffled up and he tracked down the old man sitting in the shrubbery solitary as a gnome. The burros looked up and twitched their ears and then lowered their heads to browse again. The old man watched him.

  Por que se esconde? said Glanton.

  The old man didnt answer.

  De donde viene?

  The old man seemed unwilling to reckon even with the idea of a dialogue. He squatted in the leaves with his arms folded. Glanton leaned and spat. He gestured with his chin at the burros.

  Que tiene alla?

  The old man shrugged. Hierbas, he said.

  Glanton looked at the animals and he looked at the old man. He turned his horse back toward the trail to rejoin the party.

  Por que me busca? called the old man after him.

  They moved on. There were eagles and other birds in the valley and many deer and there were wild orchids and brakes of bamboo. The river here was sizeable and it swept past enormous boulders and waterfalls fell everywhere out of the high tangled jungle. The judge had taken to riding ahead with one of the Delawares and he carried his rifle loaded with the small hard seeds of the nopal fruit and in the evening he would dress expertly the colorful birds he'd shot, rubbing the skins with gunpowder and stuffing them with balls of dried grass and packing them away in his wallets. He pressed the leaves of trees and plants into his book and he stalked tiptoe the mountain butterflies with his shirt outheld in both hands, speaking to them in a low whisper, no curious study himself. Toadvine sat watching him as he made his notations in the ledger, holding the book toward the fire for the light, and he asked him what was his purpose in all this.

  The judge's quill ceased its scratching. He looked at Toadvine. Then he continued to write again.

  Toadvine spat into the fire.

  The judge wrote on and then he folded the ledger shut and laid it to one side and pressed his hands together and passed them down over his nose and mouth and placed them palm down on his knees.

  Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.

  He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked. He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected. These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world. Yet the smallest crumb can devour us. Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.

  What's a suzerain?

  A keeper. A keeper or overlord.

  Why not say keeper then?

  Because he is a special kind of keeper. A suzerain rules even where there are other rulers. His authority countermands local judgements.

  Toadvine spat.

  The judge placed his hands on the ground. He looked at his inquisitor. This is my claim, he said. And yet everywhere upon it are pockets of autonomous life. Autonomous. In order for it to be mine nothing must be permitted to occur upon it save by my dispensation.

  Toadvine sat with his boots crossed before the fire. No man can acquaint himself with everthing on this earth, he said.

  The judge tilted his great head. The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task
of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

  I dont see what that has to do with catchin birds.

  The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I'd have them all in zoos.

  That would be a hell of a zoo.

  The judge smiled. Yes, he said. Even so.

  In the night a caravan passed, the heads of the horses and mules muffled in serapes, led along silently in the dark, the riders cautioning one to the other with their fingers to their lips. The judge atop a great boulder overlooking the trail watched them go.

  In the morning they rode on. They forded the muddy Yaqui River and they rode through stands of sunflowers tall as a man on horseback, the dead faces dished toward the west. The country began to open up and they began to come upon plantings of corn on the hillsides and a few clearings in the wilderness where there were grass huts and orange and tamarind trees. Of humans they saw none. On the second of December of eighteen forty-nine they rode into the town of Ures, capital of the state of Sonora.

  They'd not trotted half the length of the town before they had drawn about them a following of rabble unmatched for variety and sordidness by any they had yet encountered, beggars and proctors of beggars and whores and pimps and vendors and filthy children and whole deputations of the blind and the maimed and the importunate all crying out por dios and some who rode astride the backs of porters and hied them after and great numbers of folk of every age and condition who were merely curious. Females of domestic reputation lounged upon the balconies they passed with faces gotten up in indigo and almagre gaudy as the rumps of apes and they peered from behind their fans with a kind of lurid coyness like transvestites in a madhouse. The judge and Glanton rode at the head of the little column and conferred between themselves. The horses cantered nervously and if the riders roweled an occasional hand clutching at the trappings of their mounts those hands withdrew in silence.

  They put up that night at a hostel at the edge of the town run by a German who turned over the premises to them entirely and was seen no more for either service or payment. Glanton wandered through the tall and dusty rooms with their withy ceilings and at length he found an old criada cowering in what must have passed for a kitchen although it contained nothing culinary save a brazier and a few clay pots. He set her to work heating water for baths and pressed a handful of silver coins on her and charged her with setting them some kind of board. She stared at the coins without moving until he shooed her away and she went off down the hallway holding the coins cupped in her hands like a bird. She disappeared up the stairwell calling out and soon there were a number of women busy about the place.

  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.

  Si. 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?

  Si senor. 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 rod
e 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.