All the Pretty Horses (35 page)

It’s fixin to get kindly noisy in here, he said. Watch out you dont get run over by a horse.

The captain didnt answer. He watched him while he fanned the fire. When next he dragged the pistol from the coals the end of the barrel glowed at a dull red heat and he laid it on the rocks and picked it up quickly by the grips in the wet shirt and jammed the redhot barrel ash and all down into the hole in his leg.

The captain either did not know what he was going to do or knowing did not believe. He tried to rise to his feet and fell backwards and almost slid into the tinaja. John Grady had begun to shout even before the gunmetal hissed in the meat. His shout clapped shut the calls of lesser creatures everywhere about them in the night and the horses all stood swimming up into the darkness beyond the fire and squatting in terror on their great thighs screaming and pawing the stars and he drew breath and howled again and jammed the gunbarrel into the second wound and held it the longer in deference to the cooling of the metal and then he fell over on his side and dropped the revolver on the rocks where it clattered and turned and slid down the basin and vanished hissing into the pool.

He’d seized the fleshy part of his thumb in his teeth, shaking in agony. With the other hand he reached for the waterbottle standing unstoppered on the rocks and poured water over his leg and heard the flesh hiss like something on a spit and he
gasped and let the bottle fall and he raised up and called out his horse’s name to him softly where he scrabbled and fell on the rocks in his hobbles among the others that he might ease the fright in the horse’s heart.

When he turned and reached for the water bottle where it lay draining on the rocks the captain kicked it away with his boot. He looked up. He was standing over him with the rifle. He held it with the stock under his armpit and he gestured upward with it.

Get up, he said.

He pushed himself up on the rocks and looked across the tank toward the horses. He could only see two of them and he thought the third one must have run out down the arroyo and he couldnt tell which one was missing but guessed it was the Blevins horse. He got hold of his belt and managed to get his breeches back on.

Where is the keys? said the captain.

He pushed himself up and rose and turned and took the rifle away from the captain. The hammer dropped with a dull metallic snap.

Get back over there and set down, he said.

The captain hesitated. The man’s dark eyes were turned toward the fire and he could see the calculation in them and he was in such a rage of pain he thought he might have killed him had the gun been loaded. He grabbed the chain between the handcuffs and yanked the man past him and the captain gave out a low cry and went tottering off bent over and holding his arm.

He got the shells out and sat and reloaded the rifle. He reloaded it one shell at a time sweating and wheezing and trying to concentrate. He hadnt known how stupid pain could make you and he thought it should be the other way around or what was the good of it. When he’d got the rifle loaded he picked up the wet rag of a shirt and used it to carry a brand from the fire down to the edge of the tank where he stood holding it out over the water. The water was dead clear in the stone pool and he
could see the pistol and he waded out and bent and picked it up and stuck it in his belt. He walked out in the tank till the water was to his thigh which was as deep as it got and he stood there soaking the blood out of his trousers and the fire out of his wounds and talking to his horse. The horse limped down to the edge of the water and stood and he stood in the dark tinaja with the rifle over his shoulder holding the brand above him until it burned out and then he stood holding the crooked orange ember of it, still talking to the horse.

They left the fire burning in the tank and rode out down the draw and picked up the Blevins horse and pushed on. The night was overcast to the south the way they’d come and there was rain in the air. He rode Redbo bareback in the fore of their little caravan and he held up from time to time to listen but there was nothing to hear. The fire in the tank behind them was invisible save for the play of it on the rocks of the rincón and as they rode it receded to a faint glow pocketed in the otherwise dark of the desert night and then vanished altogether.

They rode up out of the wash and went on along the south-facing slope of the ridge, the country dark and silent and without boundary and the tall aloes passing blackly along the ridge one by one. He reckoned it to be some time past midnight. He looked back at the captain from time to time but the captain rode slumped in the saddle on Rawlins’ horse and seemed much reduced by his adventures. They rode on. He’d knotted his wet rag of a shirt through his belt and he rode naked to the waist and he was very cold and he told the horse that it was going to be a long night and it was. Sometime in the night he fell asleep. The clatter of the rifle dropping on the rocky ground woke him and he pulled up and turned and rode back. He sat looking down at the rifle. The captain sat Rawlins’ horse watching him. He wasnt sure he could get back on the horse and he thought about leaving the rifle there. In the end he slid down and picked up the rifle and then led the horse up along Junior’s offside and told the captain to shuck his foot out of the stirrup and he used the stirrup to mount up onto his own horse and they rode on again.

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. Vámonos.

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.

Quítese 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.

Cómo?

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.

Está 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.

Déme 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.

Cuáles de los caballos son suyos? he said.

Todos son míos.

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.

Dónde está 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.

Quiénes 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 país, 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.