Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

by Cormac McCarthy

  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 Baviacora 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 saw 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 pinon 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 steamengines 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.

  The snow had stopped falling. The kid could see them and their animals clearly on that pale ground, the men in midstride and the horses blowing cold. He had his boots in one hand and his pistol in the other and he came up out of the blanket and leveled the pistol and discharged it into the chest of the man nearest him and turned to run. His feet slid and he went to one knee. A musket fired behind him. He rose again, running down a darkened slash of pinon and turning out along the face of the slope. There were other shots behind him and when he turned he could see a man coming down through the trees. The man stopped and raised his elbows and the kid dove headlong. The musketball went racketing off among the branches. He rolled over and cocked the pistol. The barrel must have been full of snow because when he fired a hoop of orange light sprang out about it and the shot made a strange sound. He felt to see if the gun had burst but it had not. He could not see the man any more and he picked himself up and ran on. At the foot of the slope he sat gasping in the cold air and pulled on the boots and watched back among the trees. Nothing moved. He rose and stuck the pistol in his belt and went on.

  The rising sun found him crouched under a rocky promontory watching the country to the south. He sat so for an hour or more. A group of deer moved up the far side of the arroyo feeding and feeding moved on. After a while he rose and went on along the ridge.

  He walked all day through those wild uplands, eating handfuls of snow from the evergreen boughs as he went. He followed gametrails through the firs and in the evening he hiked along the rimrock where he could see the tilted desert to the southwest patched with shapes of snow that roughly reproduced the patterns of cloud cover already moved on to the south. Ice had frozen on the rock and the myriad of icicles among the conifers glistened blood red in the reflected light of the sunset spread across the prairie to the west. He sat with his back to a rock and felt the warmth of the sun on his face and watched it pool and flare and drain away dragging with it all that pink and rose and crimson sky. An icy wind sprang up and the junipers darkened suddenly against the snow and then there was just stillness and cold.

  He rose and moved on, hurrying along the shaly rocks. He walked all night. The stars swung counterclockwise in their course and the Great Bear turned and the Pleiades winked in the very roof of the vault. He walked until his toes grew numb and fairly rattled in his boots. His path upon the rimrock was leading him deeper into the mountains along the edge of a great gorge and he could see no place to descend out of that country. He sat and wrestled off the boots and held his frozen feet each by turn in his arms. They did not warm and his jaw was in a seizure of cold and when he went to put the boots back on again his feet were like clubs to poke into them. When he got them on and stood up and stamped numbly he knew that he could not stop again until the sun rose.

  It grew colder and the night lay long before him. He kept moving, following in the darkness the naked chines of rock blown bare of snow. The stars burned with a lidless fixity and they drew nearer in the night until toward dawn he was stumbling among the whinstones of the uttermost ridge to heaven, a barren range of rock so enfolded in that gaudy house that stars lay awash at his feet and migratory spalls of burning matter crossed constantly about him on their chartless reckonings. In the predawn light he made his way out upon a promontory and there received first of any creature in that country the warmth of the sun's ascending.

  He slept curled among the stones, the pistol clutched to his chest. His feet thawed and burned and he woke and lay staring up at a sky of china blue where very high there circled two black hawks about the sun slowly and perfectly opposed like paper birds upon a pole.

  He moved north all day and in the long light of the evening he saw from that high rimland the collision of armies remote and silent upon the plain below. The dark little horses circled and the landscape shifted in the paling light and the mountains beyond brooded in darkening silhouette. The distant horsemen rode and parried and a faint
drift of smoke passed over them and they moved on up the deepening shade of the valley floor leaving behind them the shapes of mortal men who had lost their lives in that place. He watched all this pass below him mute and ordered and senseless until the warring horsemen were gone in the sudden rush of dark that fell over the desert. All that land lay cold and blue and without definition and the sun shone solely on the high rocks where he stood. He moved on and soon he was in darkness himself and the wind came up off the desert and frayed wires of lightning stood again and again along the western terminals of the world. He made his way along the escarpment until he came to a break in the wall cut through by a canyon running back into the mountains. He stood looking down into this gulf where the tops of the twisted evergreens hissed in the wind and then he started down.

  The snow lay in deep pockets on the slope and he floundered down through them, steadying himself along the naked rocks until his hands were numb with cold. He crossed with care a gravel slide and made his way down the far side among the rubble stone and small gnarled trees. He fell and fell again, scrabbling for a handpurchase in the dark, rising and feeling in his belt for the pistol. He was at this work the night long. When he reached the benchland above the canyon floor he could hear a stream running in the gorge below him and he went stumbling along with his hands in his armpits like a fugitive in a madman's waistcoat. He reached a sandy wash and followed it down and it took him at last out upon the desert again where he stood tottering in the cold and casting about dumbly for some star in the overcast.

  Most of the snow had blown or melted from off the plain on which he found himself. Tandem storms were blowing downcountry from the north and the thunder trundled away in the distance and the air was cold and smelled of wet stone. He struck out across the barren pan, nothing but sparse tufts of grass and the widely scattered palmilla standing solitary and silent against the lowering sky like other beings posted there. To the east the mountains stood footed blackly into the desert and before him were bluffs or promontories that ran out like headlands massive and sombre upon the desert floor. He clopped on woodenly, half frozen, his feet senseless. He'd been without food for almost two days and he'd had little rest. He cited the terrain before him in the periodic flare of the lightning and trudged on and in this manner he rounded a dark cape of rock off to his right and came to a halt, shivering and blowing into his clawed and palsied hands. In the distance before him a fire burned on the prairie, a solitary flame frayed by the wind that freshened and faded and shed scattered sparks down the storm like hot scurf blown from some unreckonable forge howling in the waste. He sat and watched it. He could not judge how far it was. He lay on his stomach to skylight the terrain to see what men were there but there was no sky and no light. He lay for a long time watching but he saw nothing move.