Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West

VII

Black and white Jacksons — A meeting on the outskirts — Whitneyville Colts — A trial — The judge among disputants — Delaware indians — The Vandiemenlander — A hacienda — The town of Corralitos — Pasajeros de un pafs antiguo — Scene of a massacre — Hiccius Doccius — A naming of fortunes — Wheelless upon a dark river — The felon wind — Tertium quid — The town of Janos — Glanton takes a scalp — Jackson takes the stage.

In this company there rode two men named Jackson, one black, one white, both forenamed John. Bad blood lay be­tween them and as they rode up under the barren mountains the white man would fall back alongside the other and take his shadow for the shade that was in it and whisper to him. The black would check or start his horse to shake him off. As if the white man were in violation of his person, had stumbled onto some ritual dormant in his dark blood or his dark soul whereby the shape he stood the sun from on that rocky ground bore something of the man himself and in so doing lay imperiled. The white man laughed and crooned things to him that sounded like the words of love. All watched to see how this would go with them but none would caution either back from his course and when Glanton looked to the rear along the column from time to time he seemed to simply reckon them among his number and ride on.

Earlier that morning the company had met in a courtyard be­hind a house on the outskirts of the city. Two men carried from a wagon a stenciled ordnance box from the Baton Rouge arsenal and a Prussian jew named Speyer pried open the box with a pritchel and a shoeing hammer and handed up a flat package in brown butcherpaper translucent with grease like a paper of bak­ery goods. Glanton opened the package and let the paper fall to the dirt. In his hand he held a longbarreled sixshot Colt's patent revolver. It was a huge sidearm meant for dragoons and it car­ried in its long cylinders a rifle's charge and weighed close to five pounds loaded. These pistols would drive the half-ounce conical ball through six inches of hardwood and there were four dozen of them in the case. Speyer was breaking out the gang-molds and flasks and tools and Judge Holden was unwrapping another of the pistols. The men pressed about. Glanton wiped the bore and chambers of the piece and took the flask from Speyer.

She's a stout looker, said one.

He charged the bores and seated a bullet and drove it home with the hinged lever pi

A haze of gray gunsmoke lay over the courtyard. Glanton set the hammer at halfcock and spun the cylinder and lowered the hammer again. A woman appeared in the doorway of the house and one of the Mexicans spoke to her and she went in again.

Glanton looked at Holden and then he looked at Speyer. The jew smiled nervously.

They aint worth no fifty dollars.

Speyer looked grave. What is your life worth? he said.

In Texas five hundred but you'd have to discount the note with your ass.

Mr Riddle thinks that it's a fair price.

Mr Riddle aint payin it.

He's putting up the money.

Glanton turned the pistol in his hand and examined it.

I thought it was agreed, said Speyer.

Aint nothin agreed.

They were contracted for the war. You'll not see their like again.

Not till some money changes hands it aint agreed.

A detachment of soldiers, ten or a dozen of them, entered from the street with their arms at the ready.

Que pasa aqui?

Glanton looked at the soldiers without interest.

Nada, said Speyer. Todo va bien.

Bien? The sergeant was looking at the dead birds, the goat.

The woman appeared at the door again.

Esta bien, said Holden. Negocios del Gobernador.

The sergeant looked at them and he looked at the woman in the door.

Somos amigos del Senor Riddle, said Speyer.

Andale, said Glanton. You and your halfassedlookin niggers.

The sergeant stepped forward and assumed a posture of authority. Glanton spat. The judge had already crossed the space between them and now he took the sergeant aside and fell to conversing with him. The sergeant came to his armpit and the judge spoke warmly and gestured with a great expan-siveness of spirit. The soldiers squatted in the dust with their muskets and regarded the judge without expression.

Dont you give that son of a bitch no money, said Glanton.

But the judge was already bringing the man forward for a formal presentation.

Le presento al sargento Aguilar, he called, hugging the ragged militant to him. The sergeant held out his hand quite gravely. It occupied that space and the attention of all who stood there like something presented for validation and then Speyer stepped forward and took it.

Mucho gusto.

Igualmente, said the sergeant.

The judge escorted him from one to the next of the company, the sergeant formal and the Americans muttering obscenities or shaking their heads silently. The soldiers squatted on their heels and watched each movement in this charade with the same dull interest and at length the judge hove up before the black.

That dark vexed face. He studied it and he drew the sergeant forward the better for him to observe and then he began a laborious introduction in Spanish. He sketched for the sergeant a problematic career of the man before them, his hands drafting with a marvelous dexterity the shapes of what varied paths conspired here in the ultimate authority of the extant—as he told them—like strings drawn together through the eye of a ring. He adduced for their consideration references to the chil­dren of Ham, the lost tribes of Israelites, certain passages from the Greek poets, anthropological speculations as to the propa­gation of the races in their dispersion and isolation through the agency of geological cataclysm and an assessment of racial traits with respect to climatic and geographical influences. The sergeant listened to this and more with great attention and when the judge was done he stepped forward and held out his hand.

Jackson ignored him. He looked at the judge.

What did you tell him, Holden?

Dont insult him, man.

What did you tell him?

The sergeant's face had clouded. The judge took him about the shoulders and leaned and spoke into his ear and the sergeant nodded and stepped back and saluted the black.