You reckon that's the sheepcamp? said Rawlins.
We better hope it is.
You want to ride back up there and see if they'll give us some water and some grub?
No.
I dont either.
They watched the country.
Rawlins rose and walked off with the rifle. After a while he came back with some nopal fruit in his hat and poured them out on a flat rock and sat peeling them with his knife.
You want some of these? he said.
John Grady walked over and squatted and got out his own knife. The nopal was still cool from the night and it stained their fingers blood red and they sat peeling the fruit and eating it and spitting the small hard seeds and picking the spines out of their fingers. Rawlins gestured at the countryside. There aint much happenin out there, is there?
John Grady nodded. Biggest problem we got is we could run into them people and not even know it. We never even got a good look at their horses.
Rawlins spat. They got the same problem. They dont know us neither.
They'd know us.
Yeah, said Rawlins. You got a point.
Course we aint got no problem at all next to Blevins. He'd about as well to paint that horse red and go around blowin a horn.
Aint that the truth.
Rawlins wiped the blade of his knife on his trousers and folded it shut. I believe I'm losin ground with these things.
Peculiar thing is, what he says is true. It is his horse.
Well it's somebody's horse.
It damn sure dont belong to them Mexicans.
Yeah. Well he's got no way to prove it.
Rawlins put the knife in his pocket and sat inspecting his hat for nopal stickers. A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.
Where'd you hear that at?
I dont know.
John Grady folded away his knife. Well, he said. There's a lot of country out there.
Yep. Lot of country.
God knows where he's got to.
Rawlins nodded. I'll tell you what you told me.
What's that?
We aint seen the last of his skinny ass.
They rode all day upon the broad plain to the south. It was noon before they found water, a silty residue in the floor of an adobe tank. In the evening passing through a saddle in the low hills they jumped a spikehorn buck out of a stand of juniper and Rawlins shucked the rifle backward out of the bootleg scabbard and raised and cocked it and fired. He'd let go the reins and the horse bowed up and hopped sideways and stood trembling and he stepped down and ran to the spot where he'd seen the little buck and it lay dead in its blood on the ground. John Grady rode up leading Rawlins' horse. The buck was shot through the base of the skull and its eyes were just glazing. Rawlins ejected the spent shell and levered in a fresh round and lowered the hammer with his thumb and looked up.
That was a hell of a shot, said John Grady.
That was blind dumb-ass luck is what that was. I just raised up and shot.
Still a hell of a shot.
Let me have your beltknife. If we dont founder on deermeat I'm a chinaman.
They dressed out the deer and hung it in the junipers to cool and they made a foray on the slope for wood. They built a fire and they cut paloverde poles and cut forked uprights to lay them in and Rawlins skinned the buck out and sliced the meat in strips and draped it over the poles to smoke. When the fire had burned down he skewered the backstraps on two greenwood sticks and propped the sticks with rocks over the coals. Then they sat watching the meat brown and sniffed the smoke where fat dropped hissing in the coals.
John Grady walked out and unsaddled the horses and hobbled them and turned them out and came back with his blanket and saddle.
Here you go, he said.
What's that?
Salt.
I wish we had some bread.
How about some fresh corn and potatoes and apple cobbler?
Dont be a ass.
Aint them things done yet?
No. Set down. They wont never get done with you standin there thataway.
They ate the tenderloins one apiece and turned the strips of meat on the poles and lay back and rolled cigarettes.
I've seen them vaqueros worked for Blair cut a yearling heifer so thin you could see through the meat. They'd bone one out damn near in one long sheet. They'd hang the meat on poles all the way around the fire like laundry and if you come up on it at night you wouldnt know what it was. It was like lookin through somethin and seein its heart. They'd turn the meat and mend the fire in the night and you'd see em movin around inside it. You'd wake up in the night and this thing would be settin out there on the prairie in the wind and it would be glowin like a hot stove. Just red as blood.
This here meat's goin to taste like cedar, said John Grady.
I know it.
Coyotes were yapping along the ridge to the south. Rawlins leaned and tipped the ash from his cigarette into the fire and leaned back.
You ever think about dyin?
Yeah. Some. You?
Yeah. Some. You think there's a heaven?
Yeah. Dont you?
I dont know. Yeah. Maybe. You think you can believe in heaven if you dont believe in hell?
I guess you can believe what you want to.
Rawlins nodded. You think about all the stuff that can happen to you, he said. There aint no end to it.
You fixin to get religion on us?
No. Just sometimes I wonder if I wouldnt be better off if I did.
You aint fixin to quit me are you?
I said I wouldnt.
John Grady nodded.
You think them guts might draw a lion? said Rawlins.
Could.
You ever seen one?
No. You?
Just that one dead that Julius Ramsey killed with the dogs up on Grape Creek. He climbed up in the tree and knocked it out with a stick for the dogs to fight.
You think he really done that?
Yeah. I think probably he did.
John Grady nodded. He might well could of.
The coyotes yammered and ceased and then began again.
You think God looks out for people? said Rawlins.
Yeah. I guess He does. You?
Yeah. I do. Way the world is. Somebody can wake up and sneeze somewhere in Arkansas or some damn place and before you're done there's wars and ruination and all hell. You dont know what's goin to happen. I'd say He's just about got to. I dont believe we'd make it a day otherwise.
John Grady nodded.
You dont think them sons of bitches might of caught him do you?
Blevins?
Yeah.
I dont know. I thought you was glad to get shut of him.
I dont want to see nothin bad happen to him.
I dont either.
You reckon his name is Jimmy Blevins sure enough?
Who knows.
In the night the coyotes woke them and they lay in the dark and listened to them where they convened over the carcass of the deer, fighting and squalling like cats.
I want you to listen to that damned racket, said Rawlins.
He got up and got a stick from the fire and shouted at them and threw the stick. They hushed. He mended the fire and turned the meat on the greenwood racks. By the time he was back in his blankets they were at it again.
They rode all day the day following through the hill country to the west. As they rode they cut strips of the smoked and half dried deermeat and chewed on it and their hands were black and greasy and they wiped them on the withers of the horses and passed the canteen of water back and forth between them and admired the country. There were storms to the south and masses of clouds that moved slowly along the horizon with their long dark tendrils trailing in the rain. That night they camped on a ledge of rock above the plains and watched the lightning all along the horizon provo
ke from the seamless dark the distant mountain ranges again and again. Crossing the plain the next morning they came upon standing water in the bajadas and they watered the horses and drank rainwater from the rocks and they climbed steadily into the deepening cool of the mountains until in the evening of that day from the crest of the cordilleras they saw below them the country of which they'd been told. The grasslands lay in a deep violet haze and to the west thin flights of waterfowl were moving north before the sunset in the deep red galleries under the cloudbanks like schoolfish in a burning sea and on the foreland plain they saw vaqueros driving cattle before them through a gauze of golden dust.
They made camp on the south slope of the mountain and spread their blankets in the dry dirt under an overhanging ledge of rock. Rawlins took horse and rope and dragged up before their camp an entire dead tree and they built a great bonfire against the cold. Out on the plain in the shoreless night they could see like a reflection of their own fire in a dark lake the fire of the vaqueros five miles away. It rained in the night and the rain hissed in the fire and the horses came in out of the darkness and stood with their red eyes shifting and blinking and in the morning it was cold and gray and the sun a long time coming.
By noon they were on the plain riding through grass of a kind they'd not seen before. The path of the driven cattle lay through the grass like a place where water had run and by midafternoon they could see the herd before them moving west and within an hour they'd caught them up.
The vaqueros knew them by the way they sat their horses and they called them caballero and exchanged smoking material with them and told them about the country. They drove the cattle on to the west fording creeks and a small river and driving pockets of antelope and whitetail deer before them out of the stands of enormous cottonwoods through which they passed and they moved on until late in the day when they came to a fence and began to drift the cattle south. There was a road on the other side of the fence and in the road were the tracks of tires and the tracks of horses from the recent rains and a young girl came riding down the road and passed them and they ceased talking. She wore english riding boots and jodhpurs and a blue twill hacking jacket and she carried a ridingcrop and the horse she rode was a black Arabian saddlehorse. She'd been riding the horse in the river or in the cienagas because the horse was wet to its belly and the leather fenders of the saddle were dark at their lower edges and her boots as well. She wore a flatcrowned hat of black felt with a wide brim and her black hair was loose under it and fell halfway to her waist and as she rode past she turned and smiled and touched the brim of the hat with her crop and the vaqueros touched their hatbrims one by one down to the last of those who'd pretended not even to see her as she passed. Then she pushed the horse into a gaited rack and disappeared down the road.
Rawlins looked at the caporal of the vaqueros but the caporal put his horse forward and rode up the line. Rawlins fell back among the riders and alongside John Grady.
Did you see that little darlin? he said.
John Grady didnt answer. He was still looking down the road where she'd gone. There was nothing there to see but he was looking anyway.
An hour later in the failing light they were helping the vaqueros drive the cattle into a holdingpen. The gerente had ridden up from the house and he sat his horse and picked his teeth and watched the work without comment. When they were done the caporal and another vaquero took them over and introduced them namelessly and the five of them rode together back down to the gerente's house and there in the kitchen at a metal table under a bare lightbulb the gerente questioned them closely as to their understanding of ranch work while the caporal seconded their every claim and the vaquero nodded and said that it was so and the caporal volunteered testimony on his own concerning the qualifications of the gueros of which they themselves were not even aware, dismissing doubt with a sweep of his hand as if to say that these were things known to everyone. The gerente leaned back in his chair and studied them. In the end they gave their names and spelled them and the gerente put them in his book and then they rose and shook hands and walked out in the early darkness where the moon was rising and the cattle were calling and the yellow squares of windowlight gave warmth and shape to an alien world.
They unsaddled the horses and turned them into the trap and followed the caporal up to the bunkhouse. A long adobe building of two rooms with a tin roof and concrete floors. In one room a dozen bunks of wood or metal. A small sheetiron stove. In the other room a long table with benches for seats and a woodburning cookstove. An old wooden safe that held glasses and tinware. A soapstone sink with a zinc-covered sideboard. The men were already at the table eating when they entered and they went to the sideboard and got cups and plates and stood at the stove and helped themselves to beans and tortillas and a rich stew made from kid and then went to the table where the vaqueros nodded to them and made expansive gestures for them to be seated, eating the while with one hand.
After dinner they sat at the table and smoked and drank coffee and the vaqueros asked them many questions about America and all the questions were about horses and cattle and none about them. Some had friends or relatives who had been there but to most the country to the north was little more than a rumor. A thing for which there seemed no accounting. Someone brought a coal-oil lamp to the table and lit it and shortly thereafter the generator shut down and the lightbulbs hanging by their cords from the ceiling dimmed to a thin orange wire and winked out. They listened with great attention as John Grady answered their questions and they nodded solemnly and they were careful of their demeanor that they not be thought to have opinions on what they heard for like most men skilled at their work they were scornful of any least suggestion of knowing anything not learned at first hand.
They carried their dishes to a galvanized tub full of water and soapcurd and they carried the lamp to their bunks at the farther end of the bunkhouse and unrolled the ticks down over the rusty springs and spread their blankets and undressed and blew out the lamp. Tired as they were they lay a long time in the dark after the vaqueros were asleep. They could hear them breathing deeply in the room that smelled of horses and leather and men and they could hear in the distance the new cattle still not bedded down in the holdingpen.
I believe these are some pretty good old boys, whispered Rawlins.
Yeah, I believe they are too.
You see them old highback centerfire rigs?
Yeah.
You reckon they think we're on the run down here?
Aint we?
Rawlins didnt answer. After a while he said: I like hearin the cattle out there.
Yeah. I do too.
He didnt say much about Rocha, did he?
Not a lot.
You reckon that was his daughter?
I'd say it was.
This is some country, aint it?
Yeah. It is. Go to sleep.
Bud?
Yeah.
This is how it was with the old waddies, aint it?
Yeah.
How long do you think you'd like to stay here?
About a hundred years. Go to sleep.
HE HACIENDA de Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion was a ranch of eleven thousand hectares situated along the edge of the Bolson de Cuatro Cienagas in the state of Coahuila. The western sections ran into the Sierra de Anteojo to elevations of nine thousand feet but south and east the ranch occupied part of the broad barrial or basin floor of the bolson and was well watered with natural springs and clear streams and dotted with marshes and shallow lakes or lagunas. In the lakes and in the streams were species of fish not known elsewhere on earth and birds and lizards and other forms of life as well all long relict here for the desert stretched away on every side.
La Purisima was one of very few ranches in that part of Mexico retaining the full complement of six square leagues of land allotted by the colonizing legislation of eighteen twenty-four and the owner Don Hector Rocha y Villareal was one of the few hacendados who actually lived on
the land he claimed, land which had been in his family for one hundred and seventy years. He was forty-seven years old and he was the first male heir in all that new world lineage to attain such an age.
He ran upwards of a thousand head of cattle on this land. He kept a house in Mexico City where his wife lived. He flew his own airplane. He loved horses. When he rode up to the gerente's house that morning he was accompanied by four friends and by a retinue of mozos and two packanimals saddled with hardwood kiacks, one empty, the other carrying their noon provisions. They were attended by a pack of greyhound dogs and the dogs were lean and silver in color and they flowed among the legs of the horses silent and fluid as running mercury and the horses paid them no mind at all. The hacendado halloed the house and the gerente emerged in his shirtsleeves and they spoke briefly and the gerente nodded and the hacendado spoke to his friends and then all rode on. When they passed the bunkhouse and rode through the gate and turned into the road upcountry some of the vaqueros were catching their horses in the trap and leading them out to saddle them for the day's work. John Grady and Rawlins stood in the doorway drinking their coffee.
Yonder he is, said Rawlins.
John Grady nodded and slung the dregs of coffee out into the yard.
Where the hell do you reckon they're goin? said Rawlins.
I'd say they're goin to run coyotes.
They aint got no guns.
They got ropes.
Rawlins looked at him. Are you shittin me?
I dont think so.
Well I'd damn sure like to see it.
I would too. You ready?
They worked two days in the holdingpens branding and earmarking and castrating and dehorning and inoculating. On the third day the vaqueros brought a small herd of wild three year old colts down from the mesa and penned them and in the evening Rawlins and John Grady walked out to look them over. They were bunched against the fence at the far side of the enclosure and they were a mixed lot, roans and duns and bays and a few paints and they were of varied size and conformation. John Grady opened the gate and he and Rawlins walked in and he closed it behind them. The horrified animals began to climb over one another and to break up and move along the fence in both directions.
That's as spooky a bunch of horses as I ever saw, said Rawlins.