All the Pretty Horses

  What the hell for?

  The captain must have made another gesture because the guard stepped forward and took a leather sap from his rear pocket and struck Rawlins across the back of the head with it. The room Rawlins was in lit up all white and his knees buckled and he reached about him in the air.

  He was lying with his face against the splintry wooden floor. He didnt remember falling. The floor smelled of dust and grain. He pushed himself up. They waited. They seemed to have nothing else to do.

  He got to his feet and faced the captain. He felt sick to his stomach.

  You must co-po-rate, said the captain. Then you dont have no troubles. Turn around. Put down your pants.

  He turned around and unbuckled his belt and pushed his trousers down around his knees and then the cheap cotton undershorts he'd bought in the commissary at La Vega.

  Lift your shirt, said the captain.

  He lifted the shirt.

  Turn around, said the captain.

  He turned.

  Get dressed.

  He let the shirt fall and reached and hauled up his trousers and buttoned them and buckled back the belt.

  The captain was sitting holding the driver's license from his billfold.

  What is your date of birth, he said.

  September twenty-sixth nineteen and thirty-two.

  What is your address.

  Route Four Knickerbocker Texas. United States of America.

  How much is your height.

  Five foot eleven.

  How much is your weight.

  A hundred and sixty pounds.

  The captain tapped the license on the desk. He looked at Rawlins.

  You have a good memory. Where is this man?

  What man?

  He held up the license. This man. Rawlins.

  Rawlins swallowed. He looked at the guard and he looked at the captain again. I'm Rawlins, he said.

  The captain smiled sadly. He shook his head.

  Rawlins stood with his hands dangling.

  Why aint I? he said.

  Why you come here? said the captain.

  Come where?

  Here. To this country.

  We come down here to work. Somos vaqueros.

  Speak english please. You come to buy cattle?

  No sir.

  No. You have no permit, correct?

  We just come down here to work.

  At La Purisima.

  Anywhere. That's just where we found work.

  How much they pay you?

  We was gettin two hundred pesos a month.

  In Texas what do they pay for this work.

  I dont know. Hundred a month.

  Hundred dollars.

  Yessir.

  Eight hundred pesos.

  Yessir. I reckon.

  The captain smiled again.

  Why you must leave Texas?

  We just left. We didnt have to.

  What is your true name.

  Lacey Rawlins.

  He pushed the forearm of his sleeve against his forehead and wished at once he hadnt.

  Blevins is your brother.

  No. We got nothin to do with him.

  What is the number of horses you steal.

  We never stole no horses.

  These horses have no marca.

  They come from the United States.

  You have a factura for these horses?

  No. We rode down here from San Angelo Texas. We dont have no papers on them. They're just our horses.

  Where do you cross the border.

  Just out of Langtry Texas.

  What is the number of men you kill.

  I never killed nobody. I never stole nothin in my life. That's the truth.

  Why you have guns for.

  To shoot game.

  Ghem?

  Game. To hunt. Cazador.

  Now you are hunters. Where is Rawlins.

  Rawlins was close to tears. You're lookin at him, damn it.

  What is the true name of the assassin Blevins.

  I dont know.

  How long since you know him.

  I dont know him. I dont know nothin about him.

  The captain pushed back the chair and stood. He pulled down the hem of his coat to correct the wrinkles and he looked at Rawlins. You are very foolish, he said. Why do you want to have these troubles?

  They let Rawlins go just inside the door and he slid to the floor and sat for a moment and then bent slowly forward and to one side and lay holding himself. The guard crooked his finger at John Grady who sat squinting up at them in the sudden light. He rose. He looked down at Rawlins.

  You sons of bitches, he said.

  Tell em whatever they want to hear, bud, whispered Rawlins. It dont make a damn.

  Vamonos, said the guard.

  What did you tell them?

  Told em we was horsethieves and murderers. You will too.

  But by then the guard had come forward and seized his arm and shoved him out the door and the other guard shut the door and pushed the boltshackle home in the padlock.

  When they entered the office the captain sat as before. His hair newly slicked. John Grady stood before him. In the room aside from the desk and the chair that the captain sat in there were three folding metal chairs against the far wall that had an uncomfortable emptiness about them. As if people had got up and left. As if people expected were not coming. An old seed-company calendar from Monterrey was nailed to the wall above them and in the corner stood an empty wire birdcage hung from a floorpedestal like some baroque lampstand.

  On the captain's desk was a glass oil-lamp with a blackened chimney. An ashtray. A pencil that had been sharpened with a knife. Las esposas, he said.

  The guard stepped forward and unlocked the handcuffs. The captain was looking out the window. He'd taken the pencil from the desk and was tapping his lower teeth with it. He turned and tapped the desk twice with the pencil and laid it down. Like a man calling a meeting to order.

  Your friend has told us everything, he said.

  He looked up.

  You will find it is best to tell everything right away. That way you dont have no troubles.

  You didnt have no call to beat up on that boy, said John Grady. We dont know nothin about Blevins. He asked to ride with us, that's all. We dont know nothin about the horse. The horse got away from him in a thunderstorm and showed up here and that's when the trouble started. We didnt have nothin to do with it. We been workin for senor Rocha goin on three months down at La Purisima. You went down there and told him a bunch of lies. Lacey Rawlins is as good a boy as ever come out of Tom Green County.

  He is the criminal Smith.

  His name aint Smith its Rawlins. And he aint a criminal. I've known him all my life. We were raised together. We went to the same school.

  The captain sat back. He unbuttoned his shirtpocket and pushed his cigarettes up from the bottom in their package and took one out without removing the pack and buttoned the shirt again. The shirt had been tailored in military fashion and fit tightly and the cigarettes fit tightly in the pocket. He leaned in his chair and took a lighter from his coat and lit the cigarette and put the lighter on the desk beside the pencil and pulled the ashtray to him with one finger and leaned back in the chair and sat with his arm upright and the burning cigarette a few inches from his ear in a posture that seemed alien to him. As if perhaps he'd admired it somewhere in others.

  What is your age, he said.

  Sixteen. I'll be seventeen in six weeks.

  What is the age of the assassin Blevins.

  I dont know. I dont know nothin about him. He says he's sixteen. I'd guess fourteen is more like it. Thirteen even.

  He dont have no feathers.

  He what?

  He dont have no feathers.

  I wouldnt know about that. It dont interest me.

  The captain's face darkened. He puffed on the cigarette. Then he put his hand on the desk palm upward and snapped his fingers.

&nbs
p; Deme su billetera.

  John Grady took his billfold from his hip pocket and stepped forward and laid it on the desk and stepped back. The captain looked at him. He leaned forward and took the billfold and sat back and opened it and began to take out the money, the cards. The photos. He spread everything out and looked up.

  Where is your license of operator.

  I dont have one.

  You have destroy it.

  I dont have one. I never did have one.

  The assassin Blevins has no documents.

  Probably not.

  Why dont he have no documents.

  He lost his clothes.

  He lose his clothes?

  Yes.

  Why he come here to steal horses?

  It was his horse.

  The captain leaned back, smoking.

  The horse is not his horse.

  Well, you have it your own ignorant way.

  Como?

  As far as I know that horse is his horse. He had it with him in Texas and I know he brought it into Mexico because I seen him ride it across the river.

  The captain sat drumming his fingers on the arm of the chair. I dont believe you, he said.

  John Grady didnt answer.

  These are not the facts.

  He half swiveled in his chair to look out the window.

  Not the facts, he said. He turned and looked across his shoulder at the prisoner.

  You have the opportunity to tell the truth here. Here. In three days you will go to Saltillo and then you will no have this opportunity. It will be gone. Then the truth will be in other hands. You see. We can make the truth here. Or we can lose it. But when you leave here it will be too late. Too late for truth. Then you will be in the hands of other parties. Who can say what the truth will be then? At that time? Then you will blame yourself. You will see.

  There aint but one truth, said John Grady. The truth is what happened. It aint what come out of somebody's mouth.

  You like this little town? said the captain.

  It's all right.

  It is very quiet here.

  Yes.

  The peoples in this town are quiet peoples. Everybody here is quiet all the time.

  He leaned forward and stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray.

  Then comes the assassin Blevins to steal horses and kill everybody. Why is this? He was a quiet boy and never do no harm and then he come here and do these things something like that?

  He leaned back and shook his head in that same sad way.

  No, he said. He wagged one finger. No.

  He watched John Grady.

  What is the truth is this: He was no a quiet boy. He was this other kind of boy all the time. All the time.

  When the guards brought John Grady back they took Blevins away with them. He could walk but not well. When the padlock had clicked shut and rattled and swung to rest John Grady squatted facing Rawlins.

  How you doin? he said.

  I'm okay. How are you?

  I'm all right.

  What happened?

  Nothin.

  What'd you tell him?

  I told him you were full of shit.

  You didnt get to go to the shower room?

  No.

  You were gone a long time.

  Yeah.

  He keeps a white coat back there on a hook. He takes it down and puts it on and ties it around his waist with a string.

  John Grady nodded. He looked at the old man. The old man was watching them even if he didnt speak english.

  Blevins is sick.

  Yeah, I know. I think we're goin to Saltillo.

  What's in Saltillo?

  I dont know.

  Rawlins shifted against the wall. He closed his eyes.

  Are you all right? said John Grady.

  Yeah, I'm all right.

  I think he wants to make some kind of a deal with us.

  The captain?

  Captain. Whatever he is.

  What kind of a deal.

  To keep quiet. That kind of a deal.

  Like we had some kind of a choice. Keep quiet about what?

  About Blevins.

  Keep quiet about what about Blevins?

  John Grady looked at the little square of light in the door and at the skew of it on the wall above the old man's head where he sat. He looked at Rawlins.

  I think they aim to kill him. I think they aim to kill Blevins.

  Rawlins sat for a long time. He sat with his head turned away against the wall. When he looked at John Grady again his eyes were wet.

  Maybe they wont, he said.

  I think they will.

  Ah damn, said Rawlins. Just goddamn it all to hell.

  When they brought Blevins back he sat in the corner and didnt speak. John Grady talked with the old man. His name was Orlando. He didnt know what crime he was accused of. He'd been told he could go when he signed the papers but he couldnt read the papers and no one would read them to him. He didnt know how long he'd been here. Since sometime in the winter. While they were talking the guards came again and the old man shut up.

  They unlocked the door and entered and set two buckets in the floor together with a stack of enameled tin plates. One of them looked into the waterpail and the other took the slop pail from the corner and they went out again. They had about them a perfunctory air, like men accustomed to caring for livestock. When they were gone the prisoners squatted about the buckets and John Grady handed out the plates. Of which there were five. As if some unknown other were expected. There were no utensils and they used the tortillas to spoon the beans from the bucket.

  Blevins, said John Grady. You aim to eat?

  I aint hungry.

  Better get you some of this.

  You all go on.

  John Grady scooped beans into one of the spare dishes and folded the tortilla along the edge of the dish and got up and carried it to Blevins and came back. Blevins sat holding the dish in his lap.

  After a while he said: What'd you tell em about me?

  Rawlins stopped chewing and looked at John Grady. John Grady looked at Blevins.

  Told em the truth.

  Yeah, said Blevins.

  You think it would make any difference what we told them? said Rawlins.

  You could of tried to help me out.

  Rawlins looked at John Grady.

  Could of put in a good word for me, said Blevins.

  Good word, said Rawlins.

  Wouldnt of cost you nothin.

  Shut the hell up, said Rawlins. Just shut up. You say anything more I'll come over there and stomp your skinny ass. You hear me? If you say one more goddamn word.

  Leave him alone, said John Grady.

  Dumb little son of a bitch. You think that man in there dont know what you are? He knew what you were fore he ever set eyes on you. Before you were born. Damn you to hell. Just damn you to hell.

  He was almost in tears. John Grady put a hand on his shoulder. Let it go, Lacey, he said. Just let it go.

  In the afternoon the guards came and left the slop bucket and took away the plates and pails.

  How do you reckon the horses are makin it? said Rawlins.

  John Grady shook his head.

  Horses, the old man said. Caballos.

  Si. Caballos.

  They sat in the hot silence and listened to the sounds in the village. The passing of some horses along the road. John Grady asked the old man if they had mistreated him but the old man waved one hand and passed it off. He said they didnt bother him much. He said there was no sustenance in it for them. An old man's dry moans. He said that pain for the old was no longer a surprise.

  Three days later they were led blinking from their cell into the early sunlight and through the yard and the schoolhouse and out into the street. Parked there was a ton-and-a-half flatbed Ford truck. They stood in the street dirty and unshaven holding their blankets in their arms. After a while one of the guards motioned to them to climb up on the truck. Another guard
came out of the building and they were handcuffed with the same plateworn cuffs and then chained together with a towchain that lay coiled in the spare tire in the forward bed of the truck. The captain came out and stood in the sunlight rocking on his heels and drinking a cup of coffee. He wore a pipeclayed leather belt and holster, the 45 automatic slung at full cock butt-forward at his left side. He spoke to the guards and they waved their arms and a man standing on the front bumper of the truck raised up out of the engine compartment and gestured and spoke and then bent under the hood again.

  What did he say? said Blevins.

  No one answered. There were bundles and crates piled forward on the truckbed together with some fivegallon army gas-cans. People of the town kept arriving with parcels and handing slips of paper to the driver who stuffed them into his shirtpocket without comment.

  Yonder stands your gals, said Rawlins.

  I see em, said John Grady.

  They were standing close together, the one clinging to the arm of the other, both of them crying.

  What the hell sense does that make? said Rawlins.

  John Grady shook his head.

  The girls stood watching while the truck was loaded and while the guards sat smoking with their rifles propped against their shoulders and they were still standing there an hour later when the truck finally started and the hood dropped shut and the truck with the prisoners in their chains jostling slightly pulled away down the narrow dirt street and faded from sight in a rolling wake of dust and motorsmoke.

  There were three guards on the truckbed with the prisoners, young boys from the country in illfitting and unpressed uniforms. They must have been ordered not to speak to the prisoners because they took care to avoid their eyes. They nodded or raised one hand gravely to people they knew standing in the doorways as they rolled out down the dusty street. The captain sat in the cab with the driver. Some dogs came out to chase the truck and the driver cut the wheel sharply to try to run them down and the guards on the truckbed grabbed wildly for handholds and the driver looked back at them through the rear window of the cab laughing and they all laughed and punched one another and then sat gravely with their rifles.

  They turned down a narrow street and stopped in front of a house that was painted bright blue. The captain leaned across the cab and blew the horn. After a while the door opened and a man came out. He was rather elegantly dressed after the manner of a charro and he walked around the truck and the captain got out and the man got into the cab and the captain climbed in after him and shut the door and they pulled away.

  They drove down the street past the last house and the last of the corrals and mud pens and crossed a shallow ford where the slow water shone like oil in its colors and mended itself behind them before the run-off from the trucktires had even finished draining back. The truck labored up out of the ford over the scarred rock of the roadbed and then leveled out and set off across the desert in the flat midmorning light.