All the Pretty Horses

  Dawn found him sitting alone on the gravel face of the slope with the rifle leaning against his shoulder and the waterbottle at his feet watching the shape of the desert country form itself out of the gray light. Mesa and plain, the dark shape of the mountains to the east beyond which the sun was rising.

  He picked up the waterbottle and twisted out the stopper and drank and sat holding the bottle. Then he drank again. The first bars of sunlight broke past the rock buttes of the mountains to the east and fell fifty miles across the plain. Nothing moved. On the facing slope of the valley a mile away seven deer stood watching him.

  He sat for a long time. When he climbed back up the ridge to the cedars where he'd left the horses the captain was sitting on the ground and he looked badly used up.

  Let's go, he said.

  The captain looked up. I can go no farther, he said.

  Let's go, he said. Podemos descansar un poco mas adelante. Vamonos.

  They rode down off the ridge and up a long narrow valley looking for water but there was no water. They climbed out and crossed into the valley to the east and the sun was well up and felt good on his back and he tied the shirt around his waist so it would dry. By the time they crested out above the valley it was midmorning and the horses were in badly failing plight and it occurred to him that the captain might die.

  The water they found was at a stone stocktank and they dismounted and drank from the standpipe and watered the horses and sat in the bands of shade from the dead and twisted oaks at the tank and watched the open country below them. A few cattle stood perhaps a mile away. They were looking to the east, not grazing. He turned to see what they were watching but there was nothing there. He looked at the captain, a gray and shrunken figure. The heel was missing from one boot. There were streaks of black and streaks of ash on his trouserlegs from the fire and his buckled belt hung in a loop from his neck where he'd been using it to sling his arm.

  I aint goin to kill you, he said. I'm not like you.

  The captain didnt answer.

  He pulled himself up and took out the keys from his pocket and using the rifle to steady himself he hobbled over and bent and took hold of the captain's wrists and unmanacled them. The captain looked down at his wrists. They were discolored and raw from the cuffs and he sat rubbing them gently. John Grady stood over him.

  Take off your shirt, he said. I'm goin to pull that shoulder.

  Mande? said the captain.

  Quitese su camisa.

  The captain shook his head and held his arm against him like a child.

  Dont sull up on me. I aint askin, I'm tellin.

  Como?

  No tiene otra salida.

  He got the captain's shirt off and spread it out and made him lie on his back. The shoulder was badly discolored and his whole upper arm was a deep blue. He looked up. The beaded sweat glistened on his forehead. John Grady sat and put his booted foot in the captain's armpit and gripped the captain's arm by the wrist and upper elbow and rotated it slightly. The captain looked at him like a man falling from a cliff.

  Dont worry, he said. My family's been practicin medicine on Mexicans a hundred years.

  If the captain had made up his mind not to cry out he did not succeed. The horses started and milled and tried to hide behind one another. He reached up and grabbed his arm as if he'd reclaim it but John Grady had felt the coupling pop into place and he gripped the shoulder and rotated the arm again while the captain tossed his head and gasped. Then he let him go and picked up the rifle and rose.

  Esta compuesto? wheezed the captain.

  Yeah. You're all set.

  He held his arm and lay blinking.

  Put on your shirt and let's go, said John Grady. We aint settin out here in the open till your friends show up.

  Ascending into the low hills they passed a small estancia and they dismounted and went afoot through the ruins of a cornfield and found some melons and sat in the stony washedout furrows and ate them. He hobbled down the rows and gathered melons and carried them out through the field to where the horses stood and broke them open on the ground at their feet for them to feed on and he stood leaning on the rifle and looked toward the house. Some turkeys stepped about in the yard and there was a pole corral beyond the house in which stood several horses. He went back and got the captain and they mounted up and rode on. When he looked back from the ridge above the estancia he could see that it was more extensive. There was a cluster of buildings above the house and he could see the quadrangles laid out by the fences and the adobe walls and irrigation ditches. A number of rangy and slatribbed cattle stood about in the scrub. He heard a rooster crow in the noon heat. He heard a steady distant hammering of metal as of someone at a forge.

  They plodded on at a poor pace up through the hills. He'd unloaded the rifle to save carrying it and it was tied along the saddleskirt of the captain's horse and he had reassembled the fireblackened revolver and loaded it and put it in his belt. He rode Blevins' horse and the animal had an easy gait and his leg had not stopped hurting but it was the only thing keeping him awake.

  In the early evening from the eastern rim of the mesa he sat and studied the country while the horses rested. A hawk and a hawk's shadow that skated like a paper bird crossed the slopes below. He studied the terrain beyond and after a while he saw riders riding. They were perhaps five miles away. He watched them and they dropped from sight into a cut or into a shadow. Then they appeared again.

  He mounted up and they rode on. The captain slept tottering in the saddle with his arm slung through his belt. It was cool in the higher country and when the sun set it was going to be cold. He pushed on and before dark they found a deep ravine in the north slope of the ridge they'd crossed and they descended and found standing water among the rocks and the horses clambered and scrabbled their way down and stood drinking.

  He unsaddled Junior and cuffed the captain's bracelets through the wooden stirrups and told him he was free to go as far as he thought he could carry the saddle. Then he built a fire in the rocks and kicked out a place in the ground for his hip and lay down and stretched out his aching leg and put the pistol in his belt and closed his eyes.

  In his sleep he could hear the horses stepping among the rocks and he could hear them drink from the shallow pools in the dark where the rocks lay smooth and rectilinear as the stones of ancient ruins and the water from their muzzles dripped and rang like water dripping in a well and in his sleep he dreamt of horses and the horses in his dream moved gravely among the tilted stones like horses come upon an antique site where some ordering of the world had failed and if anything had been written on the stones the weathers had taken it away again and the horses were wary and moved with great circumspection carrying in their blood as they did the recollection of this and other places where horses once had been and would be again. Finally what he saw in his dream was that the order in the horse's heart was more durable for it was written in a place where no rain could erase it.

  When he woke there were three men standing over him. They wore serapes over their shoulders and one of them was holding the empty rifle and all of them wore pistols. The fire was burning from brush they'd piled on it but he was very cold and he had no way to know how long he'd been sleeping. He sat up. The man with the rifle snapped his fingers and held out his hand.

  Deme las llaves, he said.

  He reached into his pocket and took out the keys and handed them up. He and one of the other men walked over to where the captain sat chained to the saddle at the far side of the fire. The third man stood by him. They freed the captain and the one carrying the rifle came back.

  Cuales de los caballos son suyos? he said.

  Todos son mios.

  The man studied his eyes in the firelight. He walked back to the others and they talked. When they came past with the captain the captain's hands were cuffed behind him. The man carrying the rifle levered the action open and when he saw that the gun was empty stood it against a rock. He looked at John Grady. r />
  Donde esta su serape? he said.

  No tengo.

  The man loosed the blanket from his own shoulders and swung it in a slow veronica and handed it to him. Then he turned and they passed on out of the firelight to where their horses were standing in the dark with other companions, other horses.

  Quienes son ustedes? he called.

  The man who'd given him his serape turned at the outer edge of the light and touched the brim of his hat. Hombres del pais, he said. Then all went on.

  Men of the country. He sat listening as they rode up out of the ravine and then they were gone. He never saw them again. In the morning he saddled Redbo and driving the other two horses before him he rode up from the ravine and turned north along the mesa.

  He rode all day and the day clouded before him and a cool wind was coming downcountry. He'd reloaded the rifle and he carried it across the bow of the saddle and rode with the serape over his shoulders and looseherded the riderless horses before him. By evening all the north country was black and the wind was cold and he picked his way across the rim country through the sparse swales of grass and broken volcanic rock and he sat above a highland bajada in the cold blue dusk with the rifle across his knee while the staked horses grazed behind him and at the last hour light enough by which to see the iron sights of the rifle five deer entered the bajada and pricked their ears and stood and then bent to graze.

  He picked out the smallest doe among them and shot her. Blevins' horse rose howling where he'd tied it and the deer in the bajada leapt away and vanished in the dusk and the little doe lay kicking.

  When he reached her she lay in her blood in the grass and he knelt with the rifle and put his hand on her neck and she looked at him and her eyes were warm and wet and there was no fear in them and then she died. He sat watching her for a long time. He thought about the captain and he wondered if he were alive and he thought about Blevins. He thought about Alejandra and he remembered her the first time he ever saw her passing along the cienaga road in the evening with the horse still wet from her riding it in the lake and he remembered the birds and the cattle standing in the grass and the horses on the mesa. The sky was dark and a cold wind ran through the bajada and in the dying light a cold blue cast had turned the doe's eyes to but one thing more of things she lay among in that darkening landscape. Grass and blood. Blood and stone. Stone and the dark medallions that the first flat drops of rain caused upon them. He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he'd first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he'd presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he'd not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.

  In the morning the sky was clear and it was very cold and there was snow on the mountains to the north. When he woke he realized that he knew his father was dead. He raked up the coals and blew the fire to life and roasted strips cut from the deer's haunch and cowled in his blanket he sat eating and watching the country to the south out of which he'd ridden.

  They moved on. By noon the horses were in snow and there was snow in the pass and the horses trod and broke thin plates of ice in the trail where the snowmelt ran out over the wet black ground dark as ink and they toiled up through the patches of snow glazing over in the sun and rode through a dark corridor of fir trees and descended along the northern slope through pockets of sunlight, pockets of shadow, where the air smelled of rosin and wet stone and no birds sang.

  In the evening descending he saw lights in the distance and he pushed on toward them and did not stop and in the dead of night in deep exhaustion both he and the horses they reached the town of Los Picos.

  A single mud street rutted from the recent rains. A squalid alameda where there stood a rotting brushwood gazebo and a few old iron benches. The trees in the alameda had been freshly whitewashed and the upper trunks were lost in the dark above the light of the few lamps yet burning so that they looked like plaster stagetrees new from the mold. The horses stepped with great weariness among the dried rails of mud in the street and dogs barked at them from behind the wooden gates and doors they passed.

  It was cold when he woke in the morning and it was raining again. He'd bivouacked on the north side of the town and he rose wet and cold and stinking and saddled the horse and rode back into the town wrapped in the serape and driving the two horses before him.

  In the alameda a few small tin foldingtables had been set out and young girls were stringing paper ribbon overhead. They were wet from the rain and they were laughing and they were throwing the spools of crepe over the wires and catching them again and the dye was coming off the paper so that their hands were red and green and blue. He tied the horses in front of the tienda he'd passed the night before and went in and bought a sack of oats for the horses and he borrowed a galvanized bucket with which to water them and he stood in the alameda leaning on the rifle and watching them drink. He thought he'd be an object of some curiosity but the people he saw only nodded gravely to him and passed on. He carried the bucket back into the store and went down the street to where there was a small cafe and he entered and sat at one of the three small wooden tables. The floor of the cafe was packed mud newly swept and he was the only customer. He stood the rifle against the wall and ordered huevos revueltos and a cup of chocolate and he sat and waited for it to come and then he ate very slowly. The food was rich to his taste and the chocolate was made with canela and he drank it and ordered another and folded a tortilla and ate and watched the horses standing in the square across the street and watched the girls. They'd hung the gazebo with crepe and it looked like a festooned brush-pile. The proprietor showed him great courtesy and brought him fresh tortillas hot from the comal and told him that there was to be a wedding and that it would be a pity if it rained. He inquired where he might be from and showed surprise he'd come so far. He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.

  By midmorning the rain had stopped. Water dripped from the trees in the alameda and the crepe hung in soggy strings. He stood with the horses and watched the wedding party emerge from the church. The groom wore a dull black suit too large for him and he looked not uneasy but half desperate, as if unused to clothes at all. The bride was embarrassed and clung to him and they stood on the steps for their photograph to be taken and in their antique formalwear posed there in front of the church they already had the look of old photos. In the sepia monochrome of a rainy day in that lost village they'd grown old instantly.

  In the alameda an old woman in a black rebozo was going about tilting the metal tables and chairs to let the water run off. She and others began to set out food from pails and baskets and a group of three musicians in soiled silver suits stood by with their instruments. The groom took the bride's hand to help her negotiate the water standing in front of the church steps. In the water they were gray figures reflected against a gray sky. A small boy ran out and stamped in the puddle and sprayed a sheet of the muddy gray water over them and ran away with his companions. The bride clutched her husband. He scowled and looked after the boys but there was nothing to be done and she looked down at her dress and she looked at him and then she laughed. Then the husband laughed and others in the party also and they crossed the road laughing and looking from one to the other and entered the alameda among the tables and the musicians began to play.

  With the last of his money he bought coffee and tortillas and some tinned fruit and beans. The tins had been on the shelves so long they'd tarnished and the labels faded. When he passed out along the road the wedding party was s
eated at the tables eating and the musicians had stopped playing and were squatting together drinking from tin cups. A man sitting alone on one of the benches who seemed no part of the wedding looked up at the sound of the slow hooves in the road and raised one hand to the pale rider passing with blanket and rifle and he raised a hand back and then rode on.

  He rode out past the last low mudbuilt houses and took the road north, a mud track that wound up through the barren gravel hills and branched and broke and finally terminated in the tailings of an abandoned mine among the rusted shapes of pipe and pumpstanchions and old jacktimbers. He crossed on through the high country and in the evening descended the north slope and rode out onto the foreplain where the creosote deep olive from the rains stood in solemn colonies as it had stood a thousand years and more in that tenantless waste, older than any living thing that was.

  He rode on, the two horses following, riding doves up out of the pools of standing water and the sun descending out of the dark discolored overcast to the west where its redness ran down the narrow band of sky above the mountains like blood falling through water and the desert fresh from the rain turning gold in the evening light and then deepening to dark, a slow inkening over of the bajada and the rising hills and the stark stone length of the cordilleras darkening far to the south in Mexico. The floodplain he crossed was walled about with fallen traprock and in the twilight the little desert foxes had come out to sit along the walls silent and regal as icons watching the night come and the doves called from the acacia and then night fell dark as Egypt and there was just the stillness and the silence and the sound of the horses breathing and the sound of their hooves clopping in the dark. He pointed his horse at the polestar and rode on and they rode the round moon up out of the east and coyotes yammered and answered back all across the plain to the south from which they'd come.