Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West

Watch yourself there.

Several of the men stepped back.

The woman looked up. Neither courage nor heartsink in those old eyes. He pointed with his left hand and she turned to follow his hand with her gaze and he put the pistol to her head and fired.

The explosion filled all that sad little park. Some of the horses shied and stepped. A fistsized hole erupted out of the far side of the woman's head in a great vomit of gore and she pitched over and lay slain in her blood without remedy. Glanton had already put the pistol at halfcock and he flicked away the spent primer with his thumb and was preparing to recharge the cylinder. McGill, he said.

A Mexican, solitary of his race in that company, came forward.

Get that receipt for us.

He took a ski

Glanton looked at the men. They were stood some looking down at the old woman, some already seeing to their mounts or their equipage. Only the recruits were watching Glanton. He seated a pistolball in the mouth of the chamber and then he raised his eyes and looked across the square. The juggler and his family stood aligned like witnesses and beyond them in the long mud facade faces that had been watching from the doors and the naked windows dropped away like puppets in a gal­lery before the slow sweep of his eyes. He levered the ball home and capped the piece and spun the heavy pistol in his hand and returned it to the scabbard at the horse's shoulder and took the dripping trophy from McGill and turned it in the sun the way a man might qualify the pelt of an animal and then handed it back and took up the trailing reins and led his horse out through the square toward the water at the ford.

They made camp in a grove of cottonwoods across the creek just beyond the walls of the town and with dark they drifted in small groups through the smoky streets. The circus folk had set up a little pitchtent in the dusty plaza and had stood a few poles about mounted with cressets of burning oil. The juggler was beating a sort of snaredrum made of tin and rawhide and calling out in a high nasal voice his bill of entertainments while the woman shrieked Pase pase pase, sweeping her arms about her in a gesture of the greatest spectacle. Toadvine and the kid watched among the milling citizenry. Bathcat leaned and spoke to them.

Look yonder, chappies.

They turned to look where he pointed. The black stood stripped to the waist behind the tent and as the juggler turned with a sweep of his arm the girl gave him a shove and he leaped from the tent and strode about with strange posturings under the lapsing flare of the torches.

VIII

Another cantina, another advisor — Monte — A knifing — The darkest corner of the tavern the most conspicuous — The sereno — Riding north — The meatcamp — Gra

They paused without the cantina and pooled their coins and Toadvine pushed aside the dried cowhide that hung for a door and they entered a place where all was darkness and with­out definition. A lone lamp hung from a crosstree in the ceiling and in the shadows dark figures sat smoking. They made their way across the room to a claytiled bar. The place reeked of woodsmoke and sweat. A thin little man appeared before them and placed his hands ceremonially upon the tiles.

Digame, he said.

Toadvine took off his hat and put it on the bar and swept a clawed hand through his hair.

What have you got that a man could drink with just a minimum risk of blindness and death.

Como?

He cocked his thumb at his throat. What have you got to drink, he said.

The barman turned and looked behind him at his wares. He seemed uncertain whether anything there would answer their requirements.

Mescal?

Suit everbody?

Trot it out, said Bathcat.

The barman poured the measures from a clay jar into three dented tin cups and pushed them forward with care like counters on a board.

Cuanto, said Toadvine.

The barman looked fearful. Seis? he said.

Seis what?

The man held up six fingers.

Centavos, said Bathcat.

Toadvine doled the coppers onto the bar and drained his cup and paid again. He gestured at the cups all three with a wag of his finger. The kid took up his cup and drained it and set it down again. The liquor was rank, sour, tasted faintly of creosote. He was standing like the others with his back to the bar and he looked over the room. At a table in the far corner men were playing cards by the light of a single tallow candle. Along the wall opposite crouched figures seeming alien to the light who watched the Americans with no expression at all.

There's a game for ye, said Toadvine. Play monte in the dark with a pack of niggers. He raised the cup and drained it and set it on the bar and counted the remaining coins. A man was shuffling toward them out of the gloom. He had a bottle under his arm and he set it on the tiles with care together with his cup and spoke to the barman and the barman brought him a clay pitcher of water. He turned the pitcher so that the handle of it stood to his right and he looked at the kid. He was old and he wore a flatcrowned hat of a type no longer much seen in that country and he was dressed in dirty white cotton drawers and shirt. The huaraches he wore looked like dried and blackened fish lashed to the floors of his feet.

You are Texas? he said.

The kid looked at Toadvine.

You are Texas, the old man said. I was Texas three year. He held up his hand. The forefinger was gone at the first joint and perhaps he was showing them what happened in Texas or perhaps he merely meant to count the years. He lowered the hand and turned to the bar and poured wine into the cup and took up the jar of water and poured it sparingly after. He drank and set the cup down and turned to Toadvine. He wore thin white whiskers at the point of his chin and he wiped them with the back of his hand before looking up again.

You are socieded de guerra. Contra los barbaros.

Toadvine didnt know. He looked like some loutish knight be-riddled by a troll.

The old man put a phantom rifle to his shoulder and made a noise with his mouth. He looked at the Americans. You kill the Apache, no?

Toadvine looked at Bathcat. What does he want? he said.

The Vandiemenlander passed his own threefingered hand across his mouth but he allowed no affinity. The old man's full he said. Or mad.

Toadvine propped his elbows on the tiles behind him. He looked at the old man and he spat on the floor. Craziern a run­away nigger, aint ye? he said.

There was a groan from the far side of the room. A man rose and went along the wall and bent to speak with others. The groans came again and the old man passed his hand before his face twice and kissed the ends of his fingers and looked up.

How much monies they pay you? he said.

No one spoke.

You kill Gomez they pay you much monies.

The man in the dark of the far wall moaned again. Madre de Dios, he called.

Gomez, Gomez, said the old man. Even Gomez. Who can ride against the Tejanos? They are soldiers. Que soldados tan valientes. La sangre de Gomez, sangre de la gente…

He looked up. Blood, he said. This country is give much blood. This Mexico. This is a thirsty country. The blood of a thousand Christs. Nothing.

He made a gesture toward the world beyond where all the land lay under darkness and all a great stained altarstone. He turned and poured his wine and poured again from the waterjar, temperate old man, and drank.