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Las esposas, he said.
Rawlins held up his handcuffs. The guard undid them and he entered and John Grady followed. The door groaned and creaked and thudded shut behind them.
There was no light in the room save what fell through the grate in the door and they stood holding their blankets waiting for their eyes to grade the darkness. The floor of the cell was concrete and the air smelled of excrement. After a while someone to the rear of the room spoke.
Cuidado con el bote.
Dont step in the bucket, said John Grady.
Where is it?
I dont know. Just dont step in it.
I caint see a damn thing.
Another voice spoke out of the darkness. It said: Is that you all?
John Grady could see part of Rawlins' face broken into squares in the light from the grid. Turning slowly. The pain in his eyes. Ah God, he said.
Blevins? said John Grady.
Yeah. It's me.
He made his way carefully to the rear. An outstretched leg withdrew along the floor like a serpent recoiling underfoot. He squatted and looked at Blevins. Blevins moved and he could see his teeth in the partial light. As if he were smiling.
What a man wont see when he aint got a gun, said Blevins. How long have you been here?
I dont know. A long time.
Rawlins made his way toward the back wall and stood looking down at him. You told em to hunt us, didnt you? he said. Never done no such a thing, said Blevins.
John Grady looked up at Rawlins.
They knew there were three of us, he said. Yeah, said Blevins.
Bullshit, said Rawlins. They wouldnt of hunted us once they got the horse back. He's done somethin.
It was my goddamn horse, said Blevins.
They could see him now. Scrawny and ragged and filthy. It was my horse and my saddle and my gun.
They squatted. No one spoke.
What have you done? said John Grady.
Aint done nothin that nobody else wouldnt of. What have you done.
You know what he's done, said Rawlins. Did you come back here?
Damn right I come back here.
You dumb shit. What did you do? Tell me the rest of it. Aint nothin to tell.
Oh hell no, said Rawlins. Aint a damn thing to tell.
John Grady turned. He looked past Rawlins. An old man sat quietly against the wall watching them.
De qué crimen queda acusado el joven? he said. The man blinked. Asesinato, he said.
El ha matado un hombre?
The man blinked again. He held up three fingers.
What did he say? said Rawlins.
John Grady didnt answer.
What did he say? I know what the son of a bitch said.
He said he's killed three men.
That's a damn lie, said Blevins.
Rawlins sat slowly on the concrete.
We're dead, he said. We're dead men. I knew it'd come to this. From the time I first seen him.
That aint goin to help us, said John Grady.
Aint but one of em died, said Blevins.
Rawlins raised his head and looked at him. Then he got up and stepped to the other side of the room and sat down again.
Cuidado con el bote, said the old man.
John Grady turned to Blevins.
I aint done nothin to him, said Blevins.
Tell me what happened, said John Grady.
He'd worked for a German family in the town of Palau eighty miles to the east and at the end of two months he'd taken the money he'd earned and ridden back across the selfsame desert and staked out the horse at the selfsame spring and dressed in the common clothes of the country he'd walked into town and sat in front of the tienda for two days until he saw the same man go by with the Bisley's worn guttapercha grips sticking out of his belt.
What did you do?
You aint got a cigarette have you?
No. What did you do?
Didnt think you did.
What did you do?
Lord what wouldnt I give for a chew of tobacco.
What did you do?
I walked up behind him and snatched it out of his belt. That's what I done.
And shot him.
He come at me.
Come at you.
Yeah.
So you shot him.
What choice did I have?
What choice, said John Grady.
I didnt want to shoot the dumb son of a bitch. That was never no part of my intention.
What did you do then?
Time I got back to the spring where my horse was at they was on me. That boy I shot off his horse thowed down on me with a shotgun.
What happened then?
I didnt have no more shells. I'd shot em all up. My own damn fault. All I had was what was in the gun.
You shot one of the rurales?
Yeah.
Dead?
Yeah.
They sat quietly in the dark.
I could of bought shells in Muñoz, said Blevins. Fore I even come here. I had the money too.
John Grady looked at him. You got any idea the kind of mess you're in?
Blevins didnt answer.
What did they say they mean to do with you?
Send me to the penitentiary I reckon.
They aint goin to send you to the penitentiary.
Why aint they?
You aint goin to be that lucky, said Rawlins.
I aint old enough to hang.
They'll lie about your age for you.
They dont have capital punishment in this country, said John Grady. Dont listen to him.
You knew they was huntin us, didnt you? said Rawlins.
Yeah, I knew it. What was I supposed to do, send you a telegram?
John Grady waited for Rawlins to answer but he didnt. The shadow of the iron grid over the judas-hole lay skewed upon the far wall like a waiting chalkgame which the space in that dark and stinking cubicle had somehow rendered out of true. He folded his blanket and sat on it and leaned against the wall.
Do they ever let you out? Do you get to walk around?
I dont know.
What do you mean you dont know? I caint walk.
You cant walk?
That's what I said.
How come you caint walk, said Rawlins.
Cause they busted my feet all to hell is how come.
They sat. No one spoke. Soon it was dark. The old man on the other side of the room had begun to snore. They could hear sounds from the distant village. Dogs. A mother calling. Ranchero music with its falsetto cries almost like an agony played out of a cheap radio somewhere in the nameless night.
THAT NIGHT he dreamt of horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wildflowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses ru
In the morning two guards came and opened the door and handcuffed Rawlins and led him away. John Grady stood and asked where they were taking him but they didnt answer. Rawlins didnt even look back.
The captain was sitting at his desk drinking coffee and reading a three day old newspaper from Monterrey. He looked up. Pasaporte, he said.
I dont have no passport, said Rawlins.
The captain looked at him. He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. Dont have no passport, he said. You have identification?
Rawlins reached around to his left rear pocket with his manacled hands. He could reach the pocket but he couldnt reach into it. The captain nodded and one of the guards stepped forward and took out the billfold and handed it across to the captain. The captain leaned back in the chair. Quita las esposas, he said.