All the Pretty Horses

John Grady shook his head doubtfully.

  They saddled the horses and they offered to pay the man for their feed but he frowned and waved them away and they shook hands again and he wished them a good voyage and they mounted up and rode out down the rutted track south. A dog followed them out a ways and then stood watching after them.

  The morning was fresh and cool and there was woodsmoke in the air. When they topped the first rise in the road Rawlins spat in disgust. Look yonder, he said.

  Blevins was sitting the big bay horse sideways in the road.

  They slowed the horses. What the hell do you reckon is wrong with him? said Rawlins.

  He's just a kid.

  Shit, said Rawlins.

  When they rode up Blevins smiled at them. He was chewing tobacco and he leaned and spat and wiped his mouth with the underside of his wrist.

  What are you grinnin at?

  Mornin, said Blevins.

  Where'd you get the tobacco at? said Rawlins.

  Man give it to me.

  Man give it to you?

  Yeah. Where you all been?

  They rode their horses past him either side and he fell in behind.

  You all got anything to eat? he said.

  Got some lunch she put up for us, said Rawlins.

  What have you got?

  Dont know. Aint looked.

  Well why dont we take a look?

  Does it look like lunchtime to you?

  Joe, tell him to let me have somethin to eat.

  His name aint Joe, said Rawlins. And even if it was Evelyn he aint goin to give you no lunch at no seven oclock in the mornin.

  Shit, said Blevins.

  They rode till noon and past noon. There was nothing along the road save the country it traversed and there was nothing in the country at all. The only sound was the steady clop of the horses along the road and the periodic spat of Blevins' tobacco juice behind them. Rawlins rode with one leg crossed in front of him, leaning on his knee and smoking pensively as he studied the country.

  I believe I see cottonwoods yonder, he said.

  I believe I do too, said John Grady.

  They ate lunch under the trees at the edge of a small cienaga. The horses stood in the marshy grass and sucked quietly at the water. She'd tied the food up in a square of muslin and they spread the cloth on the ground and selected from among the quesadillas and tacos and bizcochos like picnickers, leaning back on their elbows in the shade with their boots crossed before them, chewing idly and observing the horses.

  Back in the old days, said Blevins, this'd be just the place where Comanches'd lay for you and bushwhack you.

  I hope they had some cards or a checkerboard with em while they was waitin, said Rawlins. It dont look to me like there's been nobody down this road in a year.

  Back in the old days you had a lot more travelers, said Blevins.

  Rawlins eyed balefully that cauterized terrain. What in the putrefied dogshit would you know about the old days? he said.

  You all want any more of this? said John Grady.

  I'm full as a tick.

  He tied up the cloth and stood and began to strip out of his clothes and he walked out naked through the grass past the horses and waded out into the water and sat in it to his waist. He spread his arms and lay backward into the water and disappeared. The horses watched him. He sat up out of the water and pushed his hair back and wiped his eyes. Then he just sat.

  They camped that night in the floor of a wash just off the road and built a fire and sat in the sand and stared into the embers.

  Blevins are you a cowboy? said Rawlins.

  I like it.

  Everbody likes it.

  I dont claim to be no top hand. I can ride.

  Yeah? said Rawlins.

  That man yonder can ride, said Blevins. He nodded across the fire toward John Grady.

  What makes you say that?

  He just can, that's all.

  Suppose I was to tell you he just took it up. Suppose I was to tell you he's never been on a horse a girl couldnt ride.

  I'd have to say you was pullin my leg.

  Suppose I was to tell you he's the best I ever saw.

  Blevins spat into the fire.

  You doubt that?

  No, I dont doubt it. Depends on who you seen ride.

  I seen Booger Red ride, said Rawlins.

  Yeah? said Blevins.

  Yeah.

  You think he can outride him?

  I know for a fact he can.

  Maybe he can and maybe he caint.

  You dont know shit from applebutter, said Rawlins. Booger Red's been dead forever.

  Dont pay no attention to him, said John Grady.

  Rawlins recrossed his boots and nodded toward John Grady. He cant take my part of it without braggin on hisself, can he?

  He's full of shit, said John Grady.

  You hear that? said Rawlins.

  Blevins leaned his chin toward the fire and spat. I dont see how you can say somebody is just flat out the best.

  You cant, said John Grady. He's just ignorant, that's all.

  There's a lot of good riders, said Blevins.

  That's right, said Rawlins. There's a lot of good riders. But there's just one that's the best. And he happens to be settin right yonder.

  Leave him alone, said John Grady.

  I aint botherin him, said Rawlins. Am I botherin you?

  No.

  Tell Joe yonder I aint botherin you.

  I said you wasnt.

  Leave him alone, said John Grady.

  DAYS TO COME they rode through the mountains and they crossed at a barren windgap and sat the horses among the rocks and looked out over the country to the south where the last shadows were running over the land before the wind and the sun to the west lay blood red among the shelving clouds and the distant cordilleras ranged down the terminals of the sky to fade from pale to pale of blue and then to nothing at all.

  Where do you reckon that paradise is at? said Rawlins.

  John Grady had taken off his hat to let the wind cool his head. You cant tell what's in a country like that till you're down there in it, he said.

  There's damn sure a bunch of it, aint there.

  John Grady nodded. That's what I'm here for.

  I hear you, cousin.

  They rode down through the cooling blue shadowland of the north slope. Evergreen ash growing in the rocky draws. Persimmon, mountain gum. A hawk set forth below them and circled in the deepening haze and dropped and they kicked their feet out of the stirrups and put the horses forward with care down the shaly rock switchbacks. At just dark they benched out on a gravel shelf and made their camp and that night they heard what they'd none heard before, three long howls to the southwest and all afterwards a silence.

  You hear that? said Rawlins.

  Yeah.

  It's a wolf, aint it?

  Yeah.

  He lay on his back in his blankets and looked out where the quartermoon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains. In that false blue dawn the Pleiades seemed to be rising up into the darkness above the world and dragging all the stars away, the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net. He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.

  It was cold in the night and in the dawn before daylight when they woke Blevins was already up and had a fire going on the ground and was huddled over it in his thin clothes. John Grady crawled out and got his boots and jacket on and walked out to study the new country as it shaped itself out of the darkness below them.

  They drank the last of the coffee and ate cold tortillas with a thin stripe of bottled hot sauce down the middle.

  How far down the road you think this'll get us? said Rawlins.

  I aint worried, said John Grady.

  Your pardner yonder looks a little misgive.

  He aint got a lot of
bacon to spare.

  You aint neither.

  They watched the sun rise below them. The horses standing out on the bench grazing raised their heads and watched it. Rawlins drank the last of his coffee and shook out his cup and reached in his shirtpocket for his tobacco.

  You think there'll be a day when the sun wont rise?

  Yeah, said John Grady. Judgment day.

  When you think that'll be?

  Whenever He decides to hold it.

  Judgment day, said Rawlins. You believe in all that?

  I dont know. Yeah, I reckon. You?

  Rawlins put the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and lit it and flipped away the match. I dont know. Maybe.

  I knowed you was a infidel, said Blevins.

  You dont know a goddamned thing, said Rawlins. Just be quiet and dont make no bigger ass of yourself than what you already are.

  John Grady got up and walked over and picked up his saddle by the horn and threw his blanket over his shoulder and turned and looked at them. Let's go, he said.

  They were down out of the mountains by midmorning and riding on a great plain grown with sideoats grama and basket-grass and dotted with lechugilla. Here they encountered the first riders they'd seen and they halted and watched while they approached on the plain a mile away, three men on horses leading a train of packanimals carrying empty kiacks.

  What do you reckon they are? said Rawlins.

  We ought not to be stopped like this, said Blevins. If we can see them they can see us.

  What the hell is that supposed to mean? said Rawlins.

  What would you think if you seen them stop?

  He's right, said John Grady. Let's keep ridin.

  They were zacateros headed into the mountains to gather chino grass. If they were surprised to see Americans horseback in that country they gave no sign. They asked them if they'd seen a brother to one of them who was in the mountains with his wife and two grown girls but they'd seen no one. The Mexicans sat their horses and took in their outfits with slow movements of their dark eyes. They themselves were a rough lot, dressed half in rags, their hats marbled with grease and sweat, their boots mended with raw cowhide. They rode old squareskirted saddles with the wood worn through the leather and they rolled cigarettes in strips of cornhusks and lit them with esclarajos of flint and steel and bits of fluff in an empty cartridge case. One of them carried an old worn Colt stuck in his belt with the gate flipped open to keep it from sliding through and they smelled of smoke and tallow and sweat and they looked as wild and strange as the country they were in.

  Son de Tejas? they said.

  Si, said John Grady.

  They nodded.

  John Grady smoked and watched them. For all their shabbiness they were well mounted and he watched those black eyes to see could he tell what they thought but he could tell nothing. They spoke of the country and of the weather in the country and they said that it was yet cold in the mountains. No one offered to dismount. They looked out over the terrain as if it were a problem to them. Something they'd not quite decided about. The little mules entrained behind them had dropped asleep standing almost as soon as they'd halted.

  The leader finished his cigarette and let fall the stub of it into the track. Bueno, he said. Vamonos.

  He nodded at the Americans. Buena suerte, he said. He put the long rowels of his spurs to the horse and they moved on. The mules passed on behind them eyeing the horses in the road and switching their tails although there seemed to be no flies in that country at all.

  In the afternoon they watered the horses at a clear stream running out of the southwest. They walked the creek and drank and filled and stoppered their canteens. There were antelope out on the plain perhaps two miles distant, all standing with their heads up.

  They rode on. There was good grass in the level floor of the valley and cattle the color of housecats to tortoiseshell and calico moved off constantly before them up through the buckthorn or stood along the low rise of ancient ground running down to the east to watch them as they passed along the road. That night they camped in the low hills and they cooked a jackrabbit that Blevins had shot with his pistol. He fielddressed it with his pocketknife and buried it in the sandy ground with the skin on and built the fire over it. He said it was the way the indians did.

  You ever eat a jackrabbit? said Rawlins.

  He shook his head. Not yet, he said.

  You better rustle some more wood if you aim to eat thisn.

  It'll cook.

  What's the strangest thing you ever ate?

  Strangest thing I ever ate, said Blevins. I guess I'd have to say that would be a oyster.

  A mountain oyster or a real oyster?

  A real oyster.

  How were they cooked?

  They wasnt cooked. They just laid there in their shells. You put hotsauce on em.

  You ate that?

  I did.

  How'd it taste?

  About like you'd expect.

  They sat watching the fire.

  Where you from, Blevins? said Rawlins.

  Blevins looked at Rawlins and looked back into the fire. Uvalde County, he said. Up on the Sabinal River.

  What'd you run off for?

  What'd you?

  I'm seventeen years old. I can go wherever I want.

  So can I.

  John Grady was sitting with his legs crossed in front of him leaning against his saddle and smoking a cigarette. You've run off before, aint you? he said.

  Yeah.

  What'd they do, catch you?

  Yeah. I was settin pins in a bowlin alley in Ardmore Oklahoma and I got dogbit by a bulldog took a chunk out of my leg the size of a Sunday roast and it got infected and the man I worked for carried me down to the doctor and they thought I had rabies or somethin and all hell busted loose and I got shipped back to Uvalde County.

  What were you doin in Ardmore Oklahoma?

  Settin pins in a bowlin alley.

  How come you wound up there?

  There was a show was supposed to come through Uvalde, town of Uvalde, and I'd saved up to go see it but they never showed up because the man that run the show got thowed in jail in Tyler Texas for havin a dirty show. Had this striptease that was part of the deal. I got down there and it said on the poster they was goin to be in Ardmore Oklahoma in two weeks and that's how come me to be in Ardmore Oklahoma.

  You went all the way to Oklahoma to see a show?

  That's what I'd saved up to do and I meant to do it.

  Did you see the show in Ardmore?

  No. They never showed up there neither.

  Blevins hauled up one leg of his overalls and turned his leg to the firelight.

  Yonder's where that son of a bitch bit me, he said. I'd as soon been bit by a alligator.

  What made you set out for Mexico? said Rawlins.

  Same reason as you.

  What reason is that?

  Cause you knowed they'd play hell sowed in oats findin your ass down here.

  There aint nobody huntin me.

  Blevins rolled down the leg of his overalls and poked at the fire with a stick. I told that son of a bitch I wouldnt take a whippin off of him and I didnt.

  Your daddy?

  My daddy never come back from the war.

  Your stepdaddy?

  Yeah.

  Rawlins leaned forward and spat into the fire. You didnt shoot him did you?

  I would of. He knowed it too.

  What was a bulldog doin in a bowlin alley?

  I didnt get bit in the bowlin alley. I was workin in the bowlin alley, that's all.

  What were you doin that you got dogbit?

  Nothin. I wasnt doin nothin.

  Rawlins leaned and spat into the fire. Where were you at at the time?

  You got a awful lot of goddamned questions. And dont be spittin in the fire where I got supper cookin.

  What? said Rawlins.

  I said dont be spittin in the fire where I got supper cookin.
>
  Rawlins looked at John Grady. John Grady had started to laugh. He looked at Blevins. Supper? he said. You'll think supper when you try and eat that stringy son of a bitch.

  Blevins nodded. You let me know if you dont want your share, he said.

  What they dredged smoking out of the ground looked like some desiccated effigy from a tomb. Blevins put it on a flat rock and peeled away the hide and scraped the meat off the bones into their plates and they soaked it down with hotsauce and rolled it in the last of the tortillas. They chewed and watched one another.

  Well, said Rawlins. It aint all that bad.

  No it aint, said Blevins. Truth is, I didnt know you could eat one at all.

  John Grady stopped chewing and looked at them. Then he went on chewing again. You all been out here longer than me, he said. I thought we all started together.

  The following day on the track south they began to encounter small ragged caravans of migrant traders headed toward the northern border. Brown and weathered men with burros three or four in tandem atotter with loads of candelilla or furs or goathides or coils of handmade rope fashioned out of lechugilla or the fermented drink called sotol decanted into drums and cans and strapped onto packframes made from treelimbs. They carried water in the skins of hogs or in canvas bags made waterproof with candelilla wax and fitted with cowhorn spigots and some had women and children with them and they would shoulder the packanimals off into the brush and relinquish the road to the caballeros and the riders would wish them a good day and they would smile and nod until they passed.

  They tried to buy water from the caravans but they had no coin among them small enough with which to do so. When Rawlins offered a man fifty centavos for the half pennysworth of water it would take to fill their canteens the man would have no part of it. By evening they'd bought a canteenful of sotol and were passing it back and forth among themselves as they rode and soon they were quite drunk. Rawlins drank and swung up the cap by its thong and screwed it down and took the canteen by its strap and turned to swing it to Blevins. Then he caught it back. Blevins' horse was plodding along behind with an empty saddle. Rawlins eyed the animal stupidly and pulled his horse up and called to John Grady riding ahead.

  John Grady turned and sat looking.

  Where's he at?

  Who knows? Lay in back yonder somewheres I reckon.

  They rode back, Rawlins leading the riderless horse by the bridlereins. Blevins was sitting in the middle of the road. He still had his hat on. Whoo, he said when he saw them. I'm drunkern shit.

  They sat their horses and looked down at him.

  Can you ride or not? said Rawlins.

  Does a bear shit in the woods? Hell yes I can ride. I was ridin when I fell off.

  He stood uncertainly and peered about. He reeled past them and felt his way among the horses. Flank and flew, Rawlins' knee. Thought you all had done rode off and left me, he said.