Midriver the horses were swimming, snorting and stretching their necks out of the water, their tails afloat behind. They quartered downstream with the current, the naked riders leaning forward and talking to the horses, Rawlins holding the rifle aloft in one hand, lined out behind one another and making for the alien shore like a party of marauders.
They rode up out of the river among the willows and rode singlefile upstream through the shallows onto a long gravel beach where they took off their hats and turned and looked back at the country they'd left. No one spoke. Then suddenly they put their horses to a gallop up the beach and turned and came back, fanning with their hats and laughing and pulling up and patting the horses on the shoulder.
Goddamn, said Rawlins. You know where we're at?
They sat the smoking horses in the moonlight and looked at one another. Then quietly they dismounted and unslung their clothes from about their necks and dressed and led the horses up out of the willow breaks and gravel benches and out upon the plain where they mounted and rode south onto the dry scrublands of Coahuila.
They camped at the edge of a mesquite plain and in the morning they cooked bacon and beans and cornbread made from meal and water and they sat eating and looking out at the country.
When'd you eat last? Rawlins said.
The other day, said the Blevins boy.
The other day.
Yeah.
Rawlins studied him. Your name aint Blivet is it?
It's Blevins.
You know what a blivet is?
What.
A blivet is ten pounds of shit in a five pound sack.
Blevins stopped chewing. He was looking out at the country to the west where cattle had come out of the breaks and were standing on the plain in the morning sun. Then he went on chewing again.
You aint said what your all's names was, he said.
You aint never asked.
That aint how I was raised, said Blevins.
Rawlins stared at him bleakly and turned away.
John Grady Cole, said John Grady. This here is Lacey Rawlins.
The kid nodded. He went on chewing.
We're from up around San Angelo, said John Grady.
I aint never been up there.
They waited for him to say where he was from but he didnt say.
Rawlins swabbed out his plate with a crumbly handful of the cornbread and ate it. Suppose, he said, that we wanted to trade that horse off for one less likely to get us shot.
The kid looked at John Grady and looked back out to where the cattle were standing. I aint tradin horses, he said.
You dont care for us to have to look out for you though, do you?
I can look out for myself.
Sure you can. I guess you got a gun and all.
He didnt answer for a minute. Then he said: I got a gun.
Rawlins looked up. Then he went on spooning up the cornbread. What kind of a gun? he said.
Thirty-two twenty Colt.
Bullshit, said Rawlins. That's a rifle cartridge.
The kid had finished eating and sat swabbing out his plate with a twist of grass.
Let's see it, said Rawlins.
He set the plate down. He looked at Rawlins and then he looked at John Grady. Then he reached into the bib of his overalls and came out with the pistol. He rolled it in his hand with a forward flip and handed it toward Rawlins butt-first upside down.
Rawlins looked at him and looked at the pistol. He set his plate down in the grass and took the gun and turned it in his hand. It was an old Colt Bisley with guttapercha grips worn smooth of their checkering. The metal was a dull gray. He turned it so as to read the script on top of the barrel. It said 32-20. He looked at the kid and flipped open the gate with his thumb and put the hammer at halfcock and turned the cylinder and ran one of the shells into his palm with the ejector rod and looked at it. Then he put it back and closed the gate and let the hammer back down.
Where'd you get a gun like this? he said.
At the gittin place.
You ever shot it?
Yeah, I shot it.
Can you hit anything with it?
The kid held out his hand for the pistol. Rawlins hefted it in his palm and turned it and passed it to him.
You want to throw somethin up I'll hit it, the kid said.
Bullshit.
The kid shrugged and put the pistol back in the bib of his overalls.
Throw what up? said Rawlins.
Anything you want.
Anything I throw you can hit.
Yeah.
Bullshit.
The kid stood up. He wiped the plate back and forth across the leg of his overalls and looked at Rawlins.
You throw your pocketbook up in the air and I'll put a hole in it, he said.
Rawlins stood. He reached in his hip pocket and took out his billfold. The kid leaned and set the plate in the grass and took out the pistol again. John Grady put his spoon in his plate and set the plate on the ground. The three of them walked out onto the plain in the long morning light like duelists.
He stood with his back to the sun and the pistol hanging alongside his leg. Rawlins turned and grinned at John Grady. He held the billfold between his thumb and finger.
You ready, Annie Oakley? he said.
Waitin on you.
He pitched it up underhanded. It rose spinning in the air, very small against the blue. They watched it, waiting for him to shoot. Then he shot. The billfold jerked sideways off across the landscape and opened out and fell twisting to the ground like a broken bird.
The sound of the pistolshot vanished almost instantly in that immense silence. Rawlins walked out across the grass and bent and picked up his billfold and put it in his pocket and came back.
We better get goin, he said.
Let's see it, said John Grady.
Let's go. We need to get away from this river.
They caught their horses and saddled them and the kid kicked out the fire and they mounted up and rode out. They rode side by side spaced out apart upon the broad gravel plain curving away along the edge of the brushland upriver. They rode without speaking and they took in the look of the new country. A hawk in the top of a mesquite dropped down and flew low along the vega and rose again up into a tree a half mile to the east. When they had passed it flew back again.
You had that pistol in your shirt back on the Pecos, didnt you? said Rawlins.
The kid looked at him from under his immense hat. Yeah, he said.
They rode. Rawlins leaned and spat. You'd of shot me with it I guess.
The kid spat also. I didnt aim to get shot, he said.
They rode up through low hills covered with nopal and creosote. Midmorning they struck a trail with horsetracks in it and turned south and at noon they rode into the town of Reforma.
They rode singlefile down the cart track that served as a street. Half a dozen low houses with walls of mud brick slumping into ruin. A few jacales of brush and mud with brush roofs and a pole corral where five scrubby horses with big heads stood looking solemnly at the horses passing in the road.
They dismounted and tied their horses at a little mud tienda and entered. A girl was sitting in a straightback chair by a sheetiron stove in the center of the room reading a comicbook by the light from the doorway and she looked up at them and looked at the comicbook and then looked up again. She got up and glanced toward the back of the store where a green curtain hung across a doorway and she put the book down in the chair and crossed the packed clay floor to the counter and turned and stood. On top of the counter were three clay jars or ollas. Two of them were empty but the third was covered with the tin lid from a lardpail and the lid was notched to accommodate the handle of an enameled tin dipper. Along the wall behind her were three or four board shelves that held canned goods and cloth and thread and candy. Against the far wall was a handmade pineboard mealbox. Above it a calendar nailed to the mud wall with a stick. Other than the stove and the chair that was all
there was in the building.
Rawlins took off his hat and pressed his forearm against his forehead and put the hat back on. He looked at John Grady. She got anything to drink?
Tiene algo que tomar? said John Grady.
Si, said the girl. She moved to take up her station behind the jars and lifted away the lid. The three riders stood at the counter and looked.
What is that? said Rawlins.
Sidron, said the girl.
John Grady looked at her. Habla ingles? he said.
Oh no, she said.
What is it? said Rawlins.
Cider.
He looked into the jar. Let's have em, he said. Give us three.
Mande?
Three, said Rawlins. Tres. He held up three fingers.
He got out his billfold. She reached to the shelves behind and got down three tumblers and stood them on the board and took up the dipper and dredged up a thin brown liquid and filled the glasses and Rawlins laid a dollar bill on the counter. It had a hole in it at each end. They reached for the glasses and John Grady nodded at the bill.
He about deadcentered your pocketbook didnt he?
Yeah, said Rawlins.
He lifted up his glass and they drank. Rawlins stood thoughtfully.
I dont know what that shit is, he said. But it tastes pretty good to a cowboy. Let us have three more here.
They set their glasses down and she refilled them. What do we owe? said Rawlins.
She looked at John Grady.
Cuanto, said John Grady.
Para todo?
Si.
Uno cincuenta.
How much is that? said Rawlins.
It's about three cents a glass.
Rawlins pushed the bill across the counter. You let your old dad buy, he said.
She made change out of a cigar box under the counter and laid the Mexican coins out on the counter and looked up. Rawlins set his empty glass down and gestured at it and paid for three more glasses and took his change and they took their glasses and walked outside.
They sat in the shade of the pole and brush ramada in front of the place and sipped their drinks and looked out at the desolate stillness of the little crossroads at noon. The mud huts. The dusty agave and the barren gravel hills beyond. A thin blue rivulet of drainwater ran down the clay gully in front of the store and a goat stood in the rutted road looking at the horses.
There aint no electricity here, said Rawlins.
He sipped his drink. He looked out down the road.
I doubt there's ever even been a car in here.
I dont know where it would come from, said John Grady.
Rawlins nodded. He held the glass to the light and rolled the cider around and looked at it. You think this here is some sort of cactus juice or what?
I dont know, said John Grady. It's got a little kick to it, dont it?
I think it does.
Better not let that youngn have no more.
I've drunk whiskey, said Blevins. This aint nothin.
Rawlins shook his head. Drinkin cactus juice in old Mexico, he said. What do you reckon they're sayin at home about now?
I reckon they're sayin we're gone, said John Grady.
Rawlins sat with his legs stretched out before him and his boots crossed and his hat over one knee and looked out at the alien land and nodded. We are, aint we? he said.
They watered the horses and loosed the cinches to let them blow and then took the road south such road as it was, riding single file through the dust. In the road were the tracks of cows, javelinas, deer, coyotes. Late afternoon they passed another collection of huts but they rode on. The road was deeply gullied and it was washed out in the draws and in the draws were cattle dead from an old drought, just the bones of them cloven about with the hard dry blackened hide.
How does this country suit you? said John Grady.
Rawlins leaned and spat but he didnt answer.
In the evening they came to a small estancia and sat the horses at the fence. There were several buildings scattered out behind the house and a pole corral with two horses standing in it. Two little girls in white dresses stood in the yard. They looked at the riders and then turned and ran into the house. A man came out.
Buenas tardes, he said.
He walked out the fence to the gate and motioned them through and showed them where to water their horses. Pasale, he said. Pasale.
They ate by oillight at a small painted pine table. The mud walls about them were hung with old calendars and magazine pictures. On one wall was a framed tin retablo of the Virgin. Under it was a board supported by two wedges driven into the wall and on the board was a small green glass with a blackened candlestub in it. The Americans sat shoulder to shoulder along one side of the table and the two little girls sat on the other side and watched them in a state of breathlessness. The woman ate with her head down and the man joked with them and passed the plates. They ate beans and tortillas and a chile of goatmeat ladled up out of a clay pot. They drank coffee from enameled tin cups and the man pushed the bowls toward them and gestured elaborately. Deben comer, he said.
He wanted to know about America, thirty miles to the north. He'd seen it once as a boy, across the river at Acuna. He had brothers who worked there. He had an uncle who'd lived some years in Uvalde Texas but he thought he was dead.
Rawlins finished his plate and thanked the woman and John Grady told her what he'd said and she smiled and nodded demurely. Rawlins was showing the two little girls how he could pull his finger off and put it back on again when Blevins crossed his utensils in the plate before him and wiped his mouth on his sleeve and leaned back from the table. There was no back to the bench and Blevins flailed wildly for a moment and then crashed to the floor behind him, kicking the table underneath and rattling the dishes and almost pulling over the bench with Rawlins and John Grady. The two girls stood instantly and clapped their hands and shrieked with delight. Rawlins had gripped the table to save himself and he looked down at the boy lying in the floor. I'll be goddamned, he said. Excuse me mam.
Blevins struggled up, only the man offering to help him.
Esta bien? he said.
He's all right, said Rawlins. You caint hurt a fool.
The woman had leaned forward to right a cup, to quiet the children. She could not laugh for the impropriety of it but the brightness in her eyes did not escape even Blevins. He climbed over the bench and sat down again.
Are you all ready to go? he whispered.
We aint done eatin, said Rawlins.
He looked around uneasily. I caint set here, he said.
He was sitting with his head lowered and was whispering hoarsely.
Why caint you set there? said Rawlins.
I dont like to be laughed at.
Rawlins looked at the girls. They were sitting again and their eyes were wide and serious again. Hell, he said. It's just kids.
I dont like to be laughed at, whispered Blevins.
Both the man and the woman were looking at them with concern.
If you dont like to be laughed at dont fall on your ass, said Rawlins.
You all excuse me, said Blevins.
He climbed out over the bench and picked up his hat and put it on and went out. The man of the house looked worried and he leaned to John Grady and made a whispered inquiry. The two girls sat looking down at their plates.
You think he'll ride on? said Rawlins.
John Grady shrugged. I doubt it.
The householders seemed to be waiting for one of them to get up and go out after him but they did not. They drank their coffee and after a while the woman rose and cleared away the plates.
John Grady found him sitting on the ground like a figure in meditation.
What are you doin? he said.
Nothin.
Why dont you come back inside.
I'm all right.
They've offered us to spend the night.
Go ahead.
What do you aim to do?
r /> I'm all right.
John Grady stood watching him. Well, he said. Suit yourself.
Blevins didnt answer and he left him sitting there.
The room they slept in was at the back of the house and it smelled of hay or straw. It was small and there was no window to it and on the floor were two pallets of straw and sacking with serapes over them. They took the lamp the host handed them and thanked him and he bowed out the low doorway and bid them goodnight. He didnt ask about Blevins.
John Grady set the lamp on the floor and they sat in the straw ticks and took off their boots.
I'm give out, said Rawlins.
I hear you.
What all did the old man say about work in this part of the country?
He says there's some big ranches yon side of the Sierra del Carmen. About three hundred kilometers.
How far's that?
Hundred and sixty, hundred and seventy miles.
You reckon he thinks we're desperados?
I dont know. Pretty nice about it if he does.
I'd say so.
He made that country sound like the Big Rock Candy Mountains. Said there was lakes and runnin water and grass to the stirrups. I cant picture country like that down here from what I've seen so far, can you?
He's probably just tryin to get us to move on.
Could be, said John Grady. He took off his hat and lay back and pulled the serape over him.
What the hell's he goin to do, said Rawlins. Sleep out in the yard?
I reckon.
Maybe he'll be gone in the mornin.
Maybe.
He closed his eyes. Don't let that lamp burn out, he said. It'll black the whole house.
I'll blow it out here in a minute.
He lay listening. There was no sound anywhere. What are you doin? he said.
He opened his eyes. He looked over at Rawlins. Rawlins had his billfold spread out across the blanket.
What are you doin?
I want you to look at my goddamned driver's license.
You wont need em down here.
There's my poolhall card. Got it too.
Go to sleep.
Look at this shit. He shot Betty Ward right between the eyes.
What was she doin in there? I didnt know you liked her.
She give me that picture. That was her schooldays picture.
In the morning they ate a huge breakfast of eggs and beans and tortillas at the same table. No one went out to get Blevins and no one asked about him. The woman packed them a lunch in a cloth and they thanked her and shook hands with the man and walked out in the cool morning. Blevins' horse was not in the corral.
You think we're this lucky? said Rawlins.